


The Bet

by Juliette1713



Category: Northern Exposure
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:27:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 47,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23066971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Juliette1713/pseuds/Juliette1713
Summary: There is no way the rest of town doesn't have money riding on thisWork in progress, but from a comment suggestion, and got to have something to do whilst stuck inside...
Relationships: Joel Fleischman/Maggie O'Connell
Comments: 29
Kudos: 31





	1. The Idea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holling's view, set during The Pilot

_Il a mal aux cheveux._

He never spoke French anymore, but he often still thought in French. Sometimes it was simple reflex - he'd grown up speaking both, as one does in Quebec, but despite his efforts to leave that part of his past behind, French was woven too deeply into his brain. Sometimes, too, there was a necessary word or phrase that simply didn't exist in English. And this was one - what leapt to mind when Holling left Ruth Anne's store just in time to see the new town doctor, still looking green at the gills, half jump and half fall from Maggie O'Connell's truck onto unsteady legs on Main Street.

It was a phrase peculiar to Quebec - roughly translated, it meant to have a hairache. Colloquially, it described that rare and oppressive hangover that one got from one of those once-in-a-lifetime nights of drinking - so bad, your hair hurt. The kind of hangover that new Dr. Fleischman must have had, after last night. 

Holling himself hadn't had a night like that in ages. Like hunting, his drinking days appeared to be well behind him - the heavy ones, at least. One couldn't survive up here without a swig of strong whiskey every now and again, of course, but Shelly didn't drink much. And then there was what had happened between him and Maurice...

 _Poor kid_ , Holling thought to himself, watching Joel steady himself against the still-open door of the pickup before slamming it closed, wincing at the sound, and then leaning down to look at his reflection in its rearview mirror. Whatever he saw came as an unpleasant surprise, and he rubbed his eyes and quickly stood back up. 

Maurice had been crowing for weeks to everyone about the doctor he'd finagled for the town, and this Joel certainly seemed to fit the part. Ivy Leaguer, certainly young, obviously bright, and even more obviously a New Yorker far from home. 

He'd come running into the bar midmorning yesterday, the only person Holling had seen wearing a coat and tie to enter his bar in at least five years. He'd asked to use the phone and made two calls - a furious and threatening one to someone named Pete and panicked-sounding call to someone that turned out to be a girlfriend back home, begging for a way out. A futile effort, most likely. If Holling knew Maurice - and despite their distance this last year, he knew he did - the boy was likely to find himself stuck. He'd come to the bar briefly for seltzer and an aspirin before pulling a chair beside the payphone and hunkering down to wait. After watching him slouched miserably by the phone for two hours with no returned call, Holling took pity on him and brought him a plate of food and a little bit of conversation. He'd been surprised to find Joel was interested enough in what he'd heard to ask about Holling and Maurice. And so Holling'd told him about Shelly.

Holling started back down Main towards the bar and then stopped to look again at the sad display still playing out across the street. Joel had made his way to the door to his office and had tried to pull it open, only to realize the door opened inward. He then pushed the door open hard and and entered (well, fell again) into the blue building - an old mining company headquarters Maurice had snapped up years ago after the miners left town.

Holling shook his head. It _would_ be nice to have a doctor in town at least. He wasn't getting any younger, that was for sure. No matter how youthful Shelly said he seemed... 

_Maggie_ 's truck? Wait, Joel had driven in in Maggie's truck? Well, _that_ had happened fast. Or had it? He was a handsome enough fellow, and he'd certainly been zozzled by the end of the night. Surely whatever led to him driving her truck today resulted more from a babysitting capacity than, well, _that_ sort of capacity. She was as capricious as she was hard-boiled sometimes, though, particularly in her choice of men. But then there was Rick to consider. And the girl the doctor had called from the payphone. Holling replayed the evening and tried to remember what he'd observed from their table.

They'd argued at first, Joel and Maggie. Women up here tended to be hardscrabbled, of course, but Maggie was something else entirely. An ex-law student, self-taught plumber, mechanic, and pilot who'd buried three boyfriends so far by his count, and yet kept on. Truth be told, Holling was a touch scared of the girl himself. Most people were. Joel didn't seem to be. Not that they'd gotten off on the right foot or anywhere near it. 

He'd unfortunately thought she was a _fille de joie_ \- a working girl - and made the mistake of rejecting a perceived advance in lieu of properly introducing himself. That she didn't punch his lights out was Holling's first clue that she might be a little soft on the guy. Joel was so different than most of Maggie's beaux - urbane, cerebral, and tenacious. And verbose - he'd always thought Maggie could talk the leg off a chair, until he'd met Joel. Even so, after he'd deflected her 'proposition', all she'd said in response was, "I am _not_ a hooker. Jerk. I'm your landlord." Joel followed her out, carrying himself like a dog who'd just been swatted on the nose with a newspaper.

Holling had been a might surprised, then, when he'd seen them back at the bar later the next night, sharing a booth and some drinks. _Several_ drinks... but still fighting.

That arguing, though, later gave way to quieter conversation... mostly. They argued here and there but then appeared to be deeply embroiled in talking for the last several hours they'd stayed. Exchanging life stories, best as he could tell from dropping off drink after drink - more on Joel's side of the table than Maggie's. Where they were from, what she'd studied in school - his coursework was obvious from his title - and how she'd come to be a bush pilot in central Alaska. It always tickled Holling to listen to the self-important and serious way young folks talked about the long and complicated lives they fancied themselves to have lived. Here, these two couldn't be a day past 28. Not even within shouting distance of his age if you combined 'em.

 _Had_ they gone to bed together together, though? He wouldn't have put it past Maggie. Nothing against her morality - she just operated as she chose, with very little care about what propriety might dictate. True, she'd dated that Rick of hers for several months, but he hardly seemed to mean much to her nor did they seem to have much in common. Particularly compared to the endless back-and-forth prattle he'd observed between Maggie and this new Joel last night... 

Joel, though, had told anyone who'd listen that he was engaged with a capital E - once which stood for Elaine, a law student, also from New York, also Jewish, and, presumably, also averse to wide open spaces and low population per square foot.

So, yes, while Maggie, he could see going to bed with someone like Joel, Joel was trickier. He tried to remember them leaving but couldn't get past his memory of having to ask them three times if they needed anything else before they heard him, engrossed as they were in their own back-and-forth.

"You served those two last night, didn't you?" A voice penetrated his solitary musings. Ruth Anne's. She'd exited her store holding her broom, apron tied across her middle. 

"Who?" The new doctor had disappeared into the mining office... _doctor's_ office, he supposed he'd better get used to calling it. _Joel's_ office. "Oh, Maggie and that young man there?"

"Those are the very two I mean," Ruth Anne said, with a smile in her voice as she began to sweep the walk between them. "I was sitting three tables over from them until 8:30 last night. They were going and going. I've never seen two people keep up arguing like that without one of them storming out of the conversation." 

Holling chuckled. "They were something else to see. I'll give you that much."

"When did they tire out finally?"

"I don't know. I reckon just before I closed. Didn't see 'em go, but she had probably had to lug him out of there across her back; he was three sheets by then. I picked up 11 empty bottles from that table," Holling said, turning to watch Ruth Anne sweep the walk. 

He wouldn't exactly call he and Ruth Anne friends, but they'd gotten close over the years. He didn't know her terribly well, and yet she was more like family than a friend anymore. She'd shown up in town with near to nothing, and Maurice had gotten her started with the store. She and Holling shared a love of bird watching and a temperament suited for running a business in a small town. He couldn't imagine the town, now, without her or her store. Nor could he imagine it without Maurice - their fight had changed the feel of the town a bit in the year now it had dragged on.

"They left _together_?" Ruth Anne stopped sweeping, her gazed fixed on the tailgate of Maggie's truck. "Hmmmm."

"I couldn't swear to it. But I confess I was trying to piece that together myself just now, seeing him drive her truck here this morning. You think he went home with her?"

"I don't know a thing about him," Ruth Anne said, crossing her arms atop the broom's handle and resting her chin on them, a smile playing on her lips. "Wouldn't put it past her, though."

"I'm sure she just lent him that truck until he gets one of his own. You know how she gets with new folks in town - takin' 'em under her wing like that." Even as he said it, he knew it rang false.

"Maggie O'Connell? You've got to be mixing her up with someone else. If she's taken an interest in the new doctor, it has hardly a thing to do with her acting as self-appointed town welcome wagon. That much I know."

"You think so? She's datin' that pilot, Rick. They live together now, don't they?"

"Only because he doesn't have two nickels to rub together or anywhere else to go, and she's got a soft heart, deep down. And a lot of her own money."

"Really? She tell you all of that?"

"Maggie? No. That's not her way. But Rick's no more to her than any of the other ones before. _This_ one, though..." Ruth Anne squinted thoughtfully at the doctor's office before resuming sweeping. She stayed silent several more seconds, and the whisking of her broom echoed off the windows that lined the sidewalk. "Ten dollars says something happens between those two by the end of this summer," she finally said, without looking up from her work.

"Maggie and the new doctor?"

"The very same. I saw a spark between them last night."

"Oh," Holling said, dismissively. "You're just looking for something interesting in this town, and new folks are all there is."

"No. I know that girl, and I know she's been waiting for something like this to happen. She needs more than an empty head with a strong jawline to tie her down. She needs someone feisty, just like her. And I'm bettin' that spark I saw last night starts to smolder some as the summer heat builds in. You saw it, too."

Holling chuffed in response.

"Fine. You willing to put some money on my being wrong?"

"Save your pennies, Ruth Anne. He's trying to get out of his contract, even as we speak."

" _Maurice_ 's contract. And Maurice doesn't make mistakes. Or at least his lawyers don't."

"Maggie's got a beau. And that Joel's engaged to be married himself."

"To a girl who's four thousand miles away." Ruth Anne finished sweeping and turned to level her gaze at Holling. "I know people, I know Maggie, and I know what I saw, Holling Vincoeur. So what'ya say?"

"You really got ten dollars to waste on nonsense and gossip?"

"Yes sir, I believe I do."

Holling extended his hand towards Ruth Anne, smiling. "Well, then I say, come labor day, you'll owe me a sawbuck, Ruth Anne."

She shook it heartily, and they turned and made their way towards their respective businesses.

_Rien ne va plus_ , he thought, _les jeux sont faits_... 


	2. The Problem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marilyn's view, set after What I Did for Love

"Holling Vincoeur, you old such-and-such! I've won fair and square! Three times over, now. Hello, Marilyn."

Marilyn nodded in silent response as she sat down next to Ruth Anne at the bar. The room was already filled with noise; she didn't need to add to it with her greeting. She found that was very often the case in life.

"I gave you another year complete! Nothing's happened at all. And I'm calling in my chips," Holling said jovially, before gently drawling, "Get you anything, Marilyn?"

"Special?"

"Tuna melt's on today."

She nodded again, thus placing her order.

"Fries?"

She smiled, and Holling noted her assent. "Comin' right up." Holling looked back at Ruth Anne before nodding at Marilyn. " _She_ works with him all day. She'll tell you I'm right." He tore Marilyn's order off his pad and left to hang it on Dave's order wheel.

Marilyn didn't press for a comment. If people wanted to talk, she'd found, they never took too long to do it. She sat with Ruth Anne in comfortable silence for a long while before the door banged open loudly.

"- can _not_ believe I listened to you!"

"Some gratitude I get for saving your life, Fleischman!"

"Saving my life? That plane didn't crash! It wasn't even so much as one minute late in departing Anchorage."

"Right. And here you are. Not dead. You're welcome."

Not a single head turned around to see who it was. No one had to. Maybe last summer, when he'd first moved there. They and their noise were a fixture now, like friendly dogs that loped around town, the softness of Chris' voice pondering philosophy aloud on KBHR or the ever-present snow in the wintertime. They were almost unnoticeable despite being the very definition of overt as they sniped back and forth, making their way across the bar to an empty booth.

"O'Connell. I lost my trip to New York over that little prognostication of yours. I at least expected the plane to have some kind of a mechanical issue."

"I can't believe you called the airline to check on a plane you weren't on just to start an argument with me. And you're telling me you'd rather have seen 250 people killed just to feel good about missing out on a silly trip to New York? You are unbelievable, you know that? You're a doctor! You're supposed to be compassionate. Where's your goodwill towards man? What happened to 'do no harm'?"

"Do _not_ quote the Hippocratic oath to me, O'Connell! And I have plenty of goodwill towards my fellow man. I wasn't wishing that plane down either. But at the very least I figured -"

The shouting suddenly stopped, and Marilyn turned her head and saw that Holling had approached the table to take their order.

"Thank goodness their mouths are about to be busy eating," Ruth Anne said, smiling wryly at Marilyn as they turned back towards the bar. "Lord. Those two could wake the dead some days. Was that going on in his office earlier, too? They didn't follow you here doing that, did they, you poor thing?"

Mairlyn shook her head no. "He's mad he missed going home."

"Oh, because of her dream? That's right..." Ruth Anne chuckled. "If that airplane _had_ crashed with him on it, he'd have spent the whole of falling out of the sky furious about nothing more than that she'd been right." She paused. "You mean to tell me that he really didn't go, all because of a dream she had?"

"Tuna melt and extra crispy fries for you, there, Marilyn," Holling announced, sliding the plate her way. "Dave twice fried 'em for you, special - just like you like."

"Thanks," she said, reaching for the ketchup.

Holling squinted across the room and Maggie and Joel, still embroiled in a furious but quieter discussion.

"They're really jawing at each other over there," Holling said, bemusedly. "Hard to get a word in to take their order."

Ruth Anne chuffed in response. "They sure care a lot about what the other one thinks for two folks not involved in any serious way."

"Oh, now don't start again... _look_ at them! Like cats and dogs, those two. How do look at that and think..." Holling looked across at Marilyn and then quickly at Ruth Anne, who shrugged. 

Marilyn sensed the question that was coming, swallowed her bite, and dabbed at her lips with a napkin. She watched them silently decide who should have to ask it. By the time Holling had started to spit out the question, she'd already started to answer it.

"Marilyn, you probably know him best of anyone. Have you noticed any kind of..."

"He likes her."

She saw Ruth Anne and Holling raise their eyebrows at each other.

"Who, Joel?" Holling questioned, leaning forward conspiratorially.

"Likes Maggie?" Ruth Anne turned on her stool to face Marilyn more squarely. " _Does_ he, now?"

"Got a lot of money ridin' on this, Marilyn. Be sure of what you say before you get anyone all excited, now."

"He does. So does she."

Ruth Anne looked triumphant. 

"But nothing's going on between them, right?" Holling added. "Just them likin' each other? They haven't had some... thing happen that you know about. Have they?"

She didn't say anything and Holling coughed uncomfortably, reddening a little before continuing. "'Course, he is your boss, and I know it'd be asking a lot for you to break confidence with him by telling-"

"They just like each other," she added simply.

Ruth Anne deflated a little, nodding.

"Who likes who?" A bright and cheery voice joined the conversation. Marilyn smiled up at Shelly as she set a glass of ice water next to her plate. "Oh! Is someone new gettin' it on? I need fresh dirt, now that Dave and Lori are splitsville. Spill, Marilyn."

Marilyn reached for her water glass and took a sip. She'd seen Joel five days a week, or just about, for the last year, in a variety of moods. The only sure way to see him smile was to look for the private one he gave himself, heading for his office whenever Maggie had just been in and had walked - or stormed - out at the end of their conversation.

He wasn't alone. With Maggie, it was that look she had when Marilyn nodded and gestured to his office after Maggie came in and asked, trying to sound gruff, "He in?" 

There was also just a feeling in the room when they occupied it together - a lot like the air felt before a storm. Energy filled, tempestuous, saturated. They felt it, too, Marilyn knew, but didn't know what to do with it. So they fought it and fought with each other. Everyone felt it. Even Shelly, her request still waiting, had to sense it. When the blanks filled themselves in, Marilyn preferred to step back and not be the one to fill them.

Holling gave Ruth Anne a warning look.

"I _saw_ that!" Shelly said excitedly. "So this has to be really good stuff! "C'mon, H! I'd tell you!"

"We're talking about Joel, Shel," Holling added, in a lowered voice, looking cautiously Joel and Maggie's way as he said it.

"Dr. F!? Whoa. He sure acts fast! His ex-squeeze just split, didn't she?" She'd instinctively looked across the room to where Joel was sitting, and her eyes widened. "Wait, you mean him and _Maggie_ are doin' the wild thing!? Oh! This is too-"

"Shhh, Shelly," Holling warned. "Don't want to get overheard."

"When did this start?" Shelly said, setting down her water pitcher and leaning in to whisper with the group.

"That's what we're trying to figure out," Ruth Anne added.

"Ooh, this is juicy! I knew this would happen! They've got the hots for each other, big time!"

"There's nothing to figure out. Nothing's really happened, Shel. Think about him. He wouldn't have stepped out on that Elaine of his."

"He would if his engagement got called off like it did. Nothin' like using your bod to help your heart get over getting dumped."

"Fine, then think about her - about Maggie. Think about _Rick_."

Shelly cocked her head to the side and considered them as she watched them talking. "I guess...Dr. F's cuter, though. It's the eyes."

"Order up!" 

"I got it," Shelly said quickly. "I bet it's theirs. I'll see if I can sniff this out when I bring it."

Ruth Anne and Marilyn turned in their chairs to watch Shelly deliver plates to Maggie and Joel, still completely engrossed in whatever they were talking about, but quieter in volume. Shelly's arrival hardly raised a ripple. They kept on talking animatedly as Shelly put their plates down. She hovered a few seconds, but they waved her off quickly in thanks and turned back to their discussion. Mirroring each other's movements without missing a beat in their conversation, they switched plates, righting the wrong order placement Shelly was unfortunately known for.

"What were they talking about so furiously?"

"Commercial fishing," Shelly said, sounding both perplexed and disappointed, putting her hands on her hips in a pout. "If there's something less sexy than that, I don't know know what it is."

"See?" Holling said. "Nothing going on."

"Beg to differ. Who looks like _that_ ," Ruth Anne asked, pointing towards them, "talking about fishing? Talking about _anything_?"

Joel was gesturing wildly with his hands, and Maggie had leaned across her plate to make fierce and confrontational eye contact with him while she argued back.

Ruth Anne and Marilyn turned back to face Holling and Shelly.

"Even you have to agree that arguing - no matter how much gusto they're coming at it with - isn't romance."

"It is for those two," Ruth Anne said, setting her fork down. "Now, I think I won, and you think you did. So our problem was the bet wasn't specific enough."

"What bet?" Shelly asked.

"Ruth Anne and I have a little wager on whether or not something kindles up between Dr. Fleischman and Maggie."

"It kindled, all right," Ruth Anne persisted, "and is now a raging inferno over in your back booth."

"They do flirt a lot, H."

"But nothing more, Shel. Now, Ruth Anne, I've extended the deadline three times because we haven't been able to agree. And we've increased the bet three times. Payout's mighty high."

"How much?" Marilyn finally felt compelled to pipe in. She knew Maggie and she knew Joel. And they were just a matter of time. "I want in."

Holling looked at her in surprise. "Well, the kitty's up to a hundred dollars now. So I suppose you'd have to put in fifty to have an equal -"

"Me too. I want in, too!" Shelly added eagerly.

"On which side?"

"Whatya mean, 'which side'?" Shelly asked. "Aren't we just picking when it'll happen by?"

"No, just whether something happens."

"Shelly's got a good revision there, Holling," Ruth Anne said, nodding. "And that should have been the bet in the first place. Not whether something exists, but whether something _happens_ between Joel and Maggie."

"Fair enough. And let's say by June."

" _This_ June?" Shelly said, seeming to hedge. "That's awful soon. Don't get me wrong, it'll happen. And when those two _do_ go at it, I mean - _stand back_. They remind me of this couple I knew back in Saskatoon. Brenda - she was stacked from top to bottom and then all the way back up top again. All the guys'd be bustin' right out of their dungarees every time she'd strut past 'em in the halls. She only got going for this one guy, Jake. Anyway, Brenda had a rule about not getting down and dirty on the first date. Problem was, Jake got tossed in the slammer the day after that. Stole the remedial math teacher's car. So they were just dying for it, and she'd visit him every day after school. They had one of those rooms with the plate of glass with air holes in it - you know, so you can hear and see, but that's it? By the time he'd finished his sentence that summer - "

"I think we see where this is headed, dear, and understand your point," Ruth Anne jumped in, gently diverting the conversation. "But you don't think they'll give in to this impulse by June?"

"I dunno...maybe..."

Marilyn was ready to place her bet. "Too stubborn. Both of them."

"I'm with Marilyn," Holling said. "Maggie's living with that Rick, for cripe's sake, and Joel's too stuck in own head to figure her out. Nothin'll happen but a bunch of arguing between now and then."

"Something'll give before then," Ruth Anne said, pointing a fry at Holling for emphasis. "Mark my words. They're near a breaking point."

"Yeah...Ruth Anne's right," Shelly added, at last. "They give each other looks sometimes that could melt concrete. Rebar and all. And they get along okay sometimes. See?"

They all turned and looked at Maggie and Joel again. Maggie was sitting with one knee pulled up into the booth with her, still laughing at whatever Joel had just said. He was grinning back at her as she slid a fry through the ketchup left on his plate. _His_ fry, clearly, since she'd only ordered soup with her sandwich.

"You _really_ think nothing will ever happen, Marilyn?" Shelly pressed. 

Marilyn thought about Joel's rare smiles - the victorious ones when he'd had a diagnostic coup, the sensitive ones when he talked to his mom and thought Marilyn wasn't in the room, the professional one he used greeting a patient for the first time - but he never smiled like he did at Maggie. He hadn't even smiled like that talking to Elaine. Their storm was still miles away, though.

"No. They'll end up together. Just not this summer..."

"Well," Ruth Anne said, dabbing at her lips with a cloth napkin. "I say you should put your money where your mouth is, then..."


	3. The Argument

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shelly's view, at the end of Slow Dance

Two hundred dollars.

" _Look_ at them, though, H!"

 _Two hundred dollars_!! And yet here she was, still fighting to get her hands on it, despite what was going on, right out in the open, right there in the middle of the bar. It just wasn't fair, and she was going to say so.

"They're dancin', hon, that's all," Holling said, smiling at Shelly as he turned her slowly around the dance floor. "Marilyn and Dave are, too, and you don't care a whit about that."

"Yeah but not as close as Dr. F. and Maggie, they aren't. You couldn't slide a sheet of loose leaf between the two of them. And, look, her head's still on his shoulder," she said gesturing. Holling turned them so he could peek over Shelly's head at the couple turning slowly together in the center of the dance floor. After their first dance, Joel had thrown his coat back into the seat of Maggie's booth and then they were right back to swaying together before the second song started. Of course, they weren't alone; everyone was out there.

Shelly loved it when the town went all soft and mushy like this. Yeah, it was kinda weird that they were doing it after a funeral and all that, but it was nice seeing everyone get so gooey anyway. Holling and her had been back and forth from work to the dance floor all night - refilling drinks for a bit and then dancing close and then back to clearing empties. At midnight, when things got real quiet and she saw Holling walk by and smile, his cute little butt wrapped up all tidy in those Wranglers of his, Shelly couldn't help herself dragging him out there again. While they danced, she saw Maggie and Joel still holding onto each other and remembered that she'd never seen them part, in all the time she'd been clearing tables. Which meant someone owed her two hundred dollars. Something she still hadn't gotten Holling to agree with her about.

"She's had a rough week, Shel. She just needs a friend."

"Oh, 'friend', 'rough week', my pinkie toe! _We're_ not even dancing like they are, and I'm your main squeeze, H! They've got a big time case of the hot and heavies. So I won. Fair and square. Again."

"Again?" He smiled that teasing smile he had. He knew just what she meant but was pretending not to.

"Yeah! You know it's not fair I didn't get that money before. They were making out in the kitchen right by me."

"They claimed that was the ice," Ruth Anne said, as Maurice turned her next to Shelly and Holling and she came within earshot. "And I think they both truly believe that story themselves."

"They were kissing! A lot!"

"Who was? Not those nancy boys, I hope," Maurice said, craning his neck to look for Ron and Erick. "They'll empty out the whole bar, doing that sort of kinky thing, out where everyone can see it."

"Lord, Maurice," Ruth Anne clucked disapprovingly. "No one cares what they get up to but you. Your homophobia isn't endearing me to you any more than your normal bigoted pigheadedness on every other subject, so give it a rest. Don't make me change partners mid-dance, otherwise I'm liable to march right over to Ron and leave Erick with no one to dance with but _you_."

"Well, who's kissin' then?" Maurice frowned and looked flustered, and maybe even a little embarrassed of himself. Shelly had always found Maurice kind of intimidating, so it was always a little funny to her the way tiny, quiet Ruth Anne could shut him up with a mean look like she did sometimes.

"Dr. F. and Maggie are," Shelly said, grinning broadly.

Maurice's head swiveled quickly until he found them. "Oh, they're doing no such thing, Shelly." He gave Ruth Anne a little dip in time to the music, which seemed to make her smile, despite her irritation with him. They danced so well together, despite how they didn't get along. Kind of like Joel and Maggie... except Shelly was real sure Ruth Anne and Maurice weren't secretly burning up mattresses together somewhere. Joel and Maggie, not so much... 

"They _are_ dancin' awful close, though," Maurice said with a thought obviously starting to brew. "Huh. You don't suppose some kind of courtship's started up, do ya? Between those two?"

"Yes we do, Maurice. They were like two horny teenagers at the ice party last month," Shelly felt she had to interject. She wasn't sure even Holling believed her about this, but she saw it. "Hands everywhere, up against everything, sucking face like there was no tomorrow right there in the kitchen. Dave spent a half hour picking up everything they knocked over the next morning. So I still don't know why I don't have the two hundred bucks. That was way before June, too!"

"But that wasn't the bet, Shelly," Holling said, twirling her a bit. "Them just kissin' a little."

"Was so! And they were kissing a _lot_!"

"What bet?" Maurice frowned that suspicious frown he had when he thought everyone else was having fun behind his back.

"Well, Maurice, the ladies and I have a little wager going over whether -"

" _When_ ," Ruth Anne corrected forcefully.

"- whether _or_ when Joel and Maggie start up a little romance together."

"That boy's got eyes for Maggie, huh?" Maurice looked thoughtful suddenly. The song ended, and another slow one came on. Whoever's quarter was in the jukebox felt romantic tonight, that's for sure. Maurice gave Shelly a hopeful grin - one that very clearly said _how 'bout for old times' sake_. She gave him her hand. They had an understanding now, and he was a very smooth dancer - better, even than Holling, she had to admit. Yeah, he was a little handsy with her sometimes, but she had a bod that wouldn't quit, after all, and it sort of came with the territory.

Ruth Anne smiled at Holling and took his hand as both couples switched partners, but stayed close. Shelly took a peek sideways across the room at Joel and Maggie, still dancing. Joel's back was to her, but she could see Maggie, her head still on Joel's shoulder, as she laughed without opening her eyes at something he'd said.

Maurice was looking, too. "They do seem awfully cozy over there. You saw 'em canoodlin'?"

"Cross my heart."

"What's the bet?"

"Fifty dollars," Holling said, turning with Ruth Anne next to them. "If something happens with them. Before June, that is."

"It's already the end of May. And that's not sufficient over there?" Maurice's eyes were still on the couple in the middle of the floor. "What, do we have to do a bed check in an hour? Seems like a forgone conclusion. How many people are in on this thing, anyway?"

"Just the three of us, plus Marilyn," Ruth Anne said.

" _Five_ of us, then, now," Maurice said, his hands still in surprisingly respectful territory at Shelly's waist. "This is easy money; that bet's gonna end tonight."

"It already ended two months ago," Shelly grumbled. She hated when people sometimes still ignored her, like she was sitting over at the kids' table, trying to listen in on the adults' conversation.

At that instant, the song ended and an upbeat, twangy country song came on. Maggie pulled back from Joel, smiled, kissed his cheek, took her coat from the hat rack by the door, and walked out the front door.

"Well, I'll be..." Ruth Anne said, staring. The four of them had stopped dancing and watched Joel watching Maggie as she left. He picked his coat up from the table and slid one arm into it, looking directly at the door she'd just exited through. "Looks like you got in just under the wire, Maurice."

"He's going home with her," Holling said, in disbelief. "Right now."

"See?!" Shelly felt triumphant. "If kissing wasn't good enough to win, then tonight's the night."

Joel walked to and then past the door as he slid his other arm into the coat's sleeve. He approached the bar, where he clapped his hand on Ed's back and then started talking to him.

"If that boy's trying to get laid, he's going about it all wrong," Maurice grumbled. "I take my fifty dollars back."

"She looked happier, at least" Ruth Anne said, sounding disappointed. "She's not chain-smoking and miserable anymore. Timing's amiss. It _is_ a bit unfeeling, even for her, to go home with someone before Rick's even cold in his grave."

"I still say I won," Shelly said, knowing she sounded pouty. She didn't care - this wasn't fair. Obviously something was brewing between them. "They were holding on to each other like they were stuck with velcro. And she was all dreamy and starry eyed. And him? He was smiling more tonight than he was that time he had those bagels shipped in. They've got it so bad for each other."

"It'd sure save me the trouble of finding another expensive doctor if she can get her claws in him deep enough he wouldn't leave," Maurice said.

"Well," Holling drawled with a smirk. "June's in a week, and, especially after tonight, I think Marilyn and I will be the clear winners. The boy had his chance and didn't take it."

"No way, no how, Holling Vincoeur! The bet was that something happened. And they were dancin' together all night."

"So was half the bar, Shel."

" _And_ they kissed two months ago! Eveyone keeps actin' like I didn't see that happen."

"I believe you, dear. That was just the ice, though" Ruth Anne maintained, doggedly. "Not them."

That was it. No more miss nice girl.

"Well, it sure looked like them, clawin' at each other playin' tonsil hockey against the deep freeze door. And it sure looked like them, twirlin' around all soppy eyed here tonight. So look. We start over. We let Maurice into this bet tonight, but we're gonna write down some rules this time. Something sure keeps happening between them, but you guys keep saying it's not romantic enough to count. So. We're gonna decide right here, right now. What is?"

"Shel, hon..."

"Don't you 'hon' me, Holling Vincoeur. Go get a piece of paper and write this down..."


	4. The Expansion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maurice's POV, after Democracy in America

Watching Holling concede to Edna and toast her victory gave Maurice conflicted feelings as he watched from his usual stool at the Brick. It had been close, but she'd pulled it off. In some ways, Maurice was secretly glad of Edna's victory. Nothing to do with her politics (which appeared to boil down to getting that damn stop sign of hers and not a thing beyond that) or even her (she was a spiteful old hermitess, after all), but the petty part of him was glad to see Holling finally get his. At least in a low-stakes battle like this. 

They'd buried the hatchet, he and Holling... only to dig it up and then make a habit of burying it together, again and again. Maurice liked to picture it now, its head sunk deep into the dirt but handle sticking up, ready to be grabbed should events conspire to make it necessary. As they did from time to time. Their friendship was stronger than ever, but this would always exist between them. It wasn't so much Shelly - she was a sweet enough girl, and pretty as a picture, but girls like her were a dime a dozen, especially when you had as many dimes as Maurice did. 

No, it was Holling's betrayal that gnawed at Maurice like it did sometimes. He claimed it was love, and, as the years ticked by and Holling and Shelly were still at it, Maurice was inclined to finally believe him. But making him look like a fool, a cuckold, and an outright ass to the rest of the town... well, the loss of the mayorship was a little more salve on that wound. And anyway, his conscience was clean - he'd voted for Holling. Truly, he had.

Maurice swiveled in his seat to look at the rest of the bar, seemingly doing what Holling and Edna were. If the election results were to be trusted - and with Joel and Maggie in charge, he knew they were - the rest of the town had been fairly evenly divided in their vote. And yet, here was everyone now, gathered joyfully together as if three hours ago, they hadn't all drawn their own little battle lines and fiercely guarded them at the ballot box. 

Even Maggie and Joel seemed to have turned things around. Every time he'd seen them this week, they were bickering and picking at each other like two pups after the same tablescraps. Joel was a Republican, thank God, if a little early to arrive at the party. In Maurice's experience, men usually turned that corner once they got their hands on a sizable piece of the pie. Joel had mere crumbs, no money, but ambition to spare. He seemed to be politically aligned with who he aspired to be, more than who he was currently. Well, even if unearned, at least he was on the side of right.

Maggie, of course, was one of those namby-pamby Democrats - socialists, really - all too much in a hurry to hand out the hard earned money of others. Normally, he'd expect it of the softer feminine mind, but Maggie wasn't your average woman. He'd never say as much to her since he'd be risking bodily injury, but he suspected getting given the family millions like he knew she'd been had probably made her free and easy with other people's money. He chuckled, thinking how her country club mother and CEO father must hate her politics, and why that was probably the reason she'd probably chosen her party affiliation.

And yet look at 'em now, he thought - my election officials. Republican and Democrat, breach healed and sharing a meal and a laugh together, like the rest of town. And sharing a drink, too, he thought, his eyes scanning the table between them in closer detail. _Several_ drinks, judging from the many dead soldiers lined up on their table. And a long and lingering meal with quite a few laughs, Maurice recalled seeing. Come to think of it, they looked awfully damn cozy for the moment... 

She'd moved one of the table's two chairs to sit backwards in it, catty-corner instead across from him, her arms folded together on the chair's low back, chin resting atop them. He was leaning towards her, elbows on the table, laughing like the drain. Their faces were six inches apart, if that. And yet...

"Maurice," came a voice next to him. "You're out late tonight." It was Erick. And Ron, Maurice realized a moment later.

"Sorry to hear about your friend," Ron added, settling on the barstool on the other side of Erick. "Heard he'd been mayor for, what, twenty years?"

"Something like that," Maurice said, slowly, still watching Joel and Maggie. They'd both been single plenty long now to make this bet pay off... 

"Maybe it's time for some new blood, though," Erick added.

"Could be," Maurice said, still distracted. Maybe everyone had missed it. No, no. They neither of them did anything in secret. If they'd started up, half the town would know immediately. 

"Got that new LP of Man of La Mancha in finally. You should hear it on the new hi-fi system we -"

"Sure, why not," Maurice said, barely hearing Ron. Something had to be holding them back. If he could just figure out...

"Hey," Ron's voice bristled, "if you're busy with something, we don't need converse. We're just trying to be polite."

Maurice turned back towards the bar. He hadn't meant to be offacious, but he could see why they saw it that way. Like hell would he apologize, though. His friendship with Ron and Erick was tricky enough to begin with - he wasn't about to add his submissiveness to things. Privately, he was fond of the both of them and respected their opinions - and their taste in chablis - quite a bit. Their lifestyle, on the other hand... well, he was still trying to get used to that. On the other hand, their inherent feminine-mindedness may be of use in deciphering hidden clues about a romantic relationship.

"What do you boys think about people who have certain feelings inside them - _romantic_ feelings, mind you, I'm talking about - but who deflect and hesitate instead of just acting on 'em?"

Ron and Erick exchanged a look Maurice didn't like, based on the smiles they were trying to hide.

"You aren't talking about _your_ feelings are you, Maurice?" Ron asked, smiling. "I wasn't aware you had any."

"Or are you trying to tell us something?" Erick had a joke in his tone and the gall to grin while asking the question.

"We're flattered, of course," Ron said, picking up Erick's line of joking, and laughing a little in anticipation of Maurice's coming response. "But you should know, we're monogamous, at this point in our-"

"You can take your flattery and your deviant insinuations elsewhere," Maurice interjected hurriedly, before Ron could finish the rest of his quip. "I'm asking you a serious question."

They sobered up fast whenever Maurice used that tone, something Maurice chalked up to his inherent and effortless gravitas. And their being a ...diminutive pair by nature.

"What's going on?"

"I'm trying to gauge whether two people in this bar are about to leave with one another. Or ever might."

"That seems out of character for you, Maurice," Ron started. "...taking in interest in other people like that," Erick supplied, finishing Ron's thought. 

"Well, normally I could give a rat's hairy ass about what people do, but... I'm tied up in this one." Maurice paused. He really wasn't supposed to tell people about the bet. That was rule number one on Shelly and Holling's folder. He'd twice violated it and, while Shelly and Holling didn't scare him one bit, being on Ruth Anne's bad side...well. "I'd rather not say why," he mumbled hastily.

Ron nodded sympathetically, seeming to understand. "You got a thing for a girl, huh?"

"No, I don't have a 'thing' for anyone. The gal in question's half my age and mean as hell sometimes. I like a more traditional woman - warm, sensitive, that sort of thing. A little lady who'll cook my supper, put a dress on, pretty herself up, now and then. Someone who isn't faster at changing a Cessna 170's oil than I am."

"You're interested in _Maggie O'Connell_?" they both asked, in the same incredulous voice. 

"You two got wax in your ears? I just said I wasn't." Their eyes were too much to bear - sympathy from anyone was offensive, but from men as light in the loafers as these two? Secrecy be damned, he had a reputation to uphold. "This ain't about love. I got money ridin' on something."

"To do with Maggie?"

"And romance?"

All three men swiveled in unison in their chairs to look at Joel and Maggie, still sitting close and arguing furiously...but smiling.

"Ah...Maggie and _Joel_ ," Ron said, putting it together.

"They're involved?" Erick sounded like the final piece had fallen into place. "Took 'em long enough."

"Those two? Involved?" Maurice knew he sounded irritated now. "No, that's the problem. They're a goddamned disappointment, that's what they are. Cost me a hundred and fifty bucks so far. And it looks like all they're about to do is cost me another fifty on top of that."

"Come again, Maurice?"

"There's a betting pool. Payoff comes when those two get their act together."

"How much?"

The bet had grown a bit in size since Maurice had joined onto it on the night of Rick's funeral. It had been Ruth Anne and Holling's idea, the original wager, but like everything he put his hand to, Maurice had made it bigger and better. He convinced them all to call off the June deadline and reformat the bet. Shelly, of all people, took charge and managed to remove all gray areas. Longing glances, latent jealousy, and innocent dinners together weren't worth anyone's time or money. They had to sleep together. On that, everyone agreed.

They'd rely on careful observation and the honor system. There would be no way to know whether and when they'd finally done the deed unless the two of them stood up in the middle of town and told everyone - a ridiculous notion. They'd have to rely on simple small town nosiness - a perfect fit for a place like Cicely. Particularly with so many in town with incentive to watch beyond mere salaciousnes. 

The thing was, the list of bettors had grown quite a bit over time. The intent that night at the Brick was to keep it just to the five of them - small and manageable. Then Dave saw Holling's envelope with the complex chart, rules, signatures, and dates scrawled across its front. He'd demanded in, and was allowed entry after a vote. Then he told two friends, and Red Murphy. The original 5 met without Dave to discuss broadening the pool. Red was an obvious asset, in Maurice's mind; working so closely with Maggie gave him insight everyone else lacked, and he was a dim enough bulb that Maurice could easily manipulate him for hints and leads. Dave's friends would pad the funds a little further and weren't valid competition in Maurice's mind.

Anyhow, the three of them were added in, at which point Maurice made it clear that the pool should thereafter stay closed to anyone else. Only come to find that Red had told not only his wife, but his neighbor, and then Mitch - the town's other pilot. They showed up clutching their money and demanding entry from Holling one night. No vote was held this time. Once those next three were added, the growth was damn near exponential. At last check, no fewer than 45 of the townsfolk were in, for fifty dollars apiece. Some of them several times each, names scrawled across a calendar that stretched two years into the future at least. 

The way it worked was that you paid your fifty, you picked your week, and then, if history was any judge, you cursed the two of them and their protracted celibacy before pulling your wallet out to try again.

"Four grand," Maurice grumbled.

Erick gave a low whistle. "What's it cost to play?"

"Fifty. You pick a week. If your week's _the_ week they gain carnal knowledge of each other, you get paid. If not, you can try again."

"Sucker's bet," Ron interjected. 

"How so?" Erick turned, sounding surprised. "They're obviously attracted to one another."

"Maybe. But if they were going to get together, they'd have done it a long time before now."

"Not necessarily. Remember how long it took us?" Erick's voice was soft and fond, and Ron smiled at the memory and reached across to give him a fond pat on his arm.

Maurice almost choked on his next sip, coughing as he sputtered out, "I don't need a recap of..."

" _Too_ long," Ron said back. They were making eyes at each other in a way Maurice didn't like. "Why'd we wait so long, anyway?"

"Boys," Maurice tried again. "This seems like a private-"

"One of us was still married at the time, if you recall..."

This train needed immediate derailing. "Let's call Shelly over - she'll put you two on the list."

"You can leave me out, Maurice," Ron said, waving him off before picking his drink back up. "There's some relationships you have in your life where the fun is just in flirting and nothing else. That's all those two have going. Believe me."

"Oh really?" Erick said, bristling. "And who would that have been for you? Dan?"

Oh God. Maurice didn't need a front row seat to their outre life story or quasi-marital difficulties. Across the room, Maggie rise from her seat and Maurice saw his conversational exit. 

"'Scuse me, fellas," he said hurriedly. "But we're missing a golden opportunity here." He stole quickly across the bar and clapped his hand on Joel's back to announce himself. 

"Fleischman. How are ya? And where'd Maggie go? I was just gonna come tell you both, you put together a damn fine election today. Not a single recount, no missing ballots - hell, even the decor of the polling place was something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Nostalgia with just the right amount of jingoism."

"Well, thanks, Maurice. I do appreciate the glowing review, but the decorations, I assure you, were all her doing. If it were up to me, there'd have been a cardboard box on a folding table with a pile of ballots and sharpened pencils next to it. Not bunting and crepe paper and God knows what other Americana I toted across hither and yon for her today." Maurice walked around Joel to face him and saw a smile creep into the corners of his mouth before he continued. "You can always leave it to O'Connell to redefine going over the top. Spent the day showing me ten different shades of blue, asking which one I liked best. We arranged and rearranged furniture until my hands were raw. I drew the line at buying her flowers...so I'm buying her dinner to make up for it."

And just like that Maurice had his opening to stoke this fire a bit. He sat quickly down in Maggie's vacant chair and leaned in conspiratorially. 

"Damn, son, I'm sorry. I didn't realize I was intruding on a romantic evening between you two... I know that gal's said she was a little sweet on ya, but I didn't think..."

"Not for _her_ , flowers - for the polling site. More decoration. Something about creating the right mood with color and..." Joel's mouth slowed as his brain caught up to his ears. "Wait, _sweet_ on me...how? What's _that_ supposed to-"

Ron and Erick appeared behind Joel, looking like their argument had ended amicably. 

"Who's sweet on you, Joel?" Ron asked innocently as gave Maurice a subtle smile over the top of Joel's head. Ha! Maybe they would pay off after all, even if they weren't joining the pool.

"O'Connell, supposedly," he said, swigging the last of his beer and trying to seem nonchalant. He was such a nervous, twitchy kid that he didn't come close to pulling it off. They'd clearly piqued his interest. "Which I could see, maybe, if by 'sweet', you meant 'unstable and potentially homicidal'. Which is all she's ever -"

"She's a stunning woman," Erick added, as Ron nodded in agreement. 

"What in the hell authority are either of you on the subject of pretty women?" Maurice couldn't stop himself asking.

"Beauty's beauty, even if I'm not attracted to it myself," Erick shrugged. 

"And Maggie's beauty incarnate," Ron added. He exchanged a sidelong smile at Erick before patting Joel's shoulder. "You're a lucky man, Joel. Lotta guys would kill to be in your shoes. Not _us_ of course, but..."

" _Lucky_? O'Connell may be a knockout, but she's twice as crazy as she is a gorgeous." He paused, eyeing Maurice suspiciously. "What exactly did she say to you?"

"Oh, hey there, guys," came Maggie's voice. She walked up to the table smirking at Joel. "Well, well, well, look at _you_ , making friends."

"Very funny," Joel retorted, trying to scowl but grinning at her. "Maurice was just complementing me on the bunting you had us drowning in."

"Yeah? You tell him you can't even hang it up straight?" She'd come to stand behind her chair, and it was if no one else were in the conversation anymore.

"Something like that," Joel said, smiling up at her. His eyes were on hers and his face had a thoughtful expression.

" _What_?" That woman could read him like a book.

"Nothin'." And that boy's fussy diction dissolved quickly in Maggie's presence.

"You ready?"

Joel gave Maurice a warning look as he rose from his chair. "Yeah. Let me get the check from Shelly, pay up, and then we can go." The second he was out of earshot, Ron surprised Maurice by moving to plant the other seed.

"Sorry to intrude on your date like this, Maggie. Erick and I just wanted to congratulate you on-"

" _Date_? What date? Oh, dinner with Fleischman just now? No. No, no, no, this wasn't a date. I mean, yes, he's paying for it, and yes I'm driving him home, but it's...not like _that_. Nothing like that. Not at all. No, we're friends. I mean, we _aren't_ really, but that doesn't mean we're automatically not _not_ friends. Ya know? Two people can have dinner and not have it mean a thing at all. And that's just what we were doing. Tonight. Not eating dinner even though we just ate dinner and definitely not as not-friends. So."

She was blushing considerably - something easily noticeable on so pale a girl as her. Not to mention that the mere accusation of being on a date with Joel caused her neurons to fire word after word without any thought as to their meaning. _Well done, boys_ , Maurice thought, smiling at Ron, _I knew you'd be an asset in this_.

"Ignore him, Maggie," Erick jumped in, sounding apologetic. "He's just starved for gossip and seeing it in every little thing. Just because Joel was just saying how pretty you looked tonight, he's turned it into something else in his head. So he's got a little crush on you - it's a small town. Everyone falls in and out of love with each other all the time."

"Wait. Fleischman has a-"

"Hey, you ready?" Joel had reappeared. 

"Yeah," Maggie said warily.

"'Kay. Shall we?"

"Shall we what?"

"You're taking me home. Remember?"

"I'm not taking you home; I'm taking you _to_ your home."

"I fail to see the distinction, O'Connell."

"You would."

He looked exasperated but said nothing in return. At least with his mouth. What his face said was plenty to annoy her.

" _What_?" Maurice found himself wondering whether, if the two of them really applied themselves, they could find a way to argue in total silence.

"Nothing."

"You're staring at me. Do I have food on my face or something? Mismatched clothes? What?"

"You're back on how you look again? You look great, like I said bef-" Joel stopped talking abruptly, his eyes looking quickly at Maurice before meeting Maggie's again. "Nevermind. Hey, when we get to my place, you wanna come in for a minute?"

"Why?!?

"'Cause you left that toolkit of yours right in the middle of my kitch-"

"No!" Maggie said, glancing self-consciously at Ron, her blush spreading down the front of her neck. "Absolutely not. No. It's late. And I don't need that stuff. At all. Just...just bring it to work. Leave it with Marilyn, I'll get it tomorrow. Or something. I don't know. I'm not going in there with you, though. Got it?"

Joel put both palms up silently, like he was waving a white flag. Maggie turned abruptly to leave, and Joel gave Maurice an exasperated look. "Like I said, she's gorgeous, but crazy. And hardly sweet on me. Nor I on her. While we're at it."

"C'mon, Fleischman," came Maggie's voice from the closing door. "And put your coat on. It's 40 degrees out, and you've got the internal temperature regulation of an iguana." 

Joel turned back to the three men as he pulled one sleeve of his coat on, and that same smile from before was now playing at the corners of his mouth. "See you guys."

The second the door shut behind him, Ron spoke. "Okay. We're in for fifty apiece."


	5. The Near-Miss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erick's POV during Our Wedding

"I still think the blue would have looked better on me."

"With _that_ tie?" Ron wrinkled his nose at the thought of it. They were still facing forward, trying to keep their conversation to a whisper, even as the noise in the room had increased to a dull roar as everyone waited. And waited.

Even without seeing his face, Erick knew his tone, but asked the question anyway. "What was wrong with it?"

Ron turned towards him, smiled, and said nothing as he dusted some lint off Erick's shoulder. Erick was trying to seem irritated, but he couldn't help smiling at Ron. "Oh, come on," he added. "It had nothing to do with that tie - you just hate that blue suit of mine."

"Maybe. But at least I love _you_." They smiled again at one another. The room entered another quieter lull, as if everyone had run out of something to talk about all at once. The only thing, really, _to_ talk about was the wedding that wasn't currently happening. The entire chapel had dissolved into excited chatter once the bride had made her announcement and grand exit, followed quickly by a groomsman, the groom, and a hapless accountant now serving as premarital counselor. Given the counselees in question, he probably deserved combat pay for his efforts.

It was silent a bit longer, and Ron and Erick turned back to look straight ahead of them again.

"Whether or not they go through with it, she's got a pretty dress." Erick interjected after thirty seconds' silence.

"Gorgeous," Ron agreed. "That beading? Hat's atrocious, though."

Erick elbowed him in the side gently. "Shhh."

"Well, it is. And she's not within earshot. Oddly, I do like the aesthetic of the hanging origami birds. Didn't think I would."

"Yeah? I do, too. Cranes, Marilyn said they were. A thousand bring good luck."

"They'll need it."

Erick laughed quietly. "Hmmm... do you think..."

"... we're actually going to see nuptials today?"

That hadn't been the thought Erick was mulling over, but the question Ron finished for him was a different one that was on his mind. And maybe this wasn't the moment for the question he had been poised to ask. "Surely they'll come to some kind of an understanding and go through with it. Right?"

"Hard to say. Put it this way, I think if this were Vegas, the house edge would be on no Adam and Eve."

Erick made as if he were reaching for his wallet. "Wanna put some money on it?"

"Stop," Ron chided, laughing. "We're in a church. Between you gambling, our living in several different kinds of sin all at once, and my extremely lapsed Catholicism, we're lucky the whole place doesn't go up in flames around us."

Erick's eyes scanned the assembled and now-bored guests, fidgeting kids, chess players, and the tired officiant and wilted wedding party - all sprawled now on the stairs next to the altar. Minus Joel. Why Adam sought Joel's counsel was anybody's guess. They hardly seemed to get along, let alone be friends. Quite a bit like Joel and...

"Where's Maggie?" Ron's voice asked, almost reading Erick's train of thought. "Isn't she the maid of honor?

"I think so. Or Shelly? Either way, it's odd. I mean, they hardly know Eve."

"Fitting, though. They're quite a bit alike. If you think about it."

"Who, Maggie and Eve?"

"Maggie and Eve. Joel and Adam. Individually and together."

"How so?" 

"Adam's neurotic, abrasive, self-important, anti-social, terse, dictatorial. Joel's all those things, too, just toned down about three notches."

"Three?

"Okay, two. And Eve's self-possessed but somehow insecure at the same time. And bossy, suspicious, rich, and a touch crazy."

"A touch?"

"Maybe more than a touch. Or maybe I'm talking about Maggie this time. Like I said, they're very similar. Don't you think?"

"So what are you saying - is the next wedding we see here going to be when Maggie runs out on Joel?"

"Maybe..." That question from earlier tickled at Erick's tongue again. He couldn't keep it from making its way out this time. "What would you say, though, if... if I asked you what you thought about get getting married?"

"Who, _us_?"

"No, two other people. Yes, us."

"Point of fact - we _can't_."

"Says who?"

"Alaskan law, for one." Ron paused, and Erick stole a glance at his face, trying to see whether he'd just made a major blunder, showing his hand like this. He got caught almost immediately. "What made you think of this all of a sudden?"

"Apart from sitting in a wedding venue with nothing to do but contemplate marriage for the last 45 minutes?" Erick smiled a little. Ron looked surprised but not uncomfortable or like he wished Erick hadn't brought the topic up. His eyes looked happy.

"And what, the success story playing out here convinced you we should give it a try?" 

"I don't know. The idea's popped into my head here and there recently. And I know we don't need any ceremony to define us. Particularly one that doesn't welcome us in it. And I know that weddings are slathered in schmaltzy, obvious kitsch. And that your folks aren't entirely convinced you aren't going to wake up straight one of these days..."

"...anything's possible," Ron said, smiling. He linked his arm through Erick's. "So we should make things unofficially official between us?"

"We do throw a hell of a party..."

"That we do...and we can de-schmalz almost anything..." It sure didn't _sound_ like a no. Of course, it would be a lot better to know for sure if they had a deal or not.

"So?" 

"So..." Ron was still smiling. After a pause, he opened his mouth and -

"We have a deal!" Ed's voice filled the room so suddenly and at such a seemingly fitting time, both Ron and Erick jumped. Watching the usually caustic and tempestuous Adam and Eve smile at each other like they were the only two people in the room while Chris officiated their wedding sealed it. Erick felt Ron squeeze his hand as Chris recited, 'I shall love because of you'. He knew then that the only thing left to decide was when and where.

"Back to that bet of yours from the ceremony," Erick murmured hours later, as they swayed gently together at the Brick - a wedding reception noteworthy in that neither the bride nor the groom appeared. True to their style, no one saw Adam or Eve again after the ceremony ended. Nor saw them leave.

"About Maggie and Joel calling things off when she's halfway down the aisle someday?"

"Yeah - have you seen them this evening?"

"Here and there. Why? You think something's..." Ron turned and scanned the room before seeing Joel, sitting and talking at the bar with Maurice and Ed. "They aren't doing a thing right now. He's over there and she's -"

"Left five minutes ago. That's my point."

Erick's mind had been gathering red flags all night, which he hadn't realized until he saw Maggie toss Joel a strange look from the front door - one he held until she turned to go, both of them looking unhappy and uncomfortable. Years as an embassy police officer made him subconsciously keep mental notes on every person in any given room, and it wasn't the sort of thing one just turned off, even after 15 years. Seeing her departure, Erick flashed back through portions of the day - the stiff way Maggie took Joel's arm as they walked down the aisle together the first time; how she'd walked back down it with Ed the second time, even though Ed's tie was blue, not pink as matched Joel's, and, as maid of honor, she should have walked with Joel; the nervous side glances Joel cast her way as they stood together behind Chris; the way they seemed to subtly lean away from each other...after years and years of standing a half step too close...

"So?"

"So they've been avoiding each other all night. They're usually in each other's orbit at all times. Something's up."

"Maybe they're mad at each other. People fight. Especially them."

"Yeah, but they _like_ fighting. It brings them together, not apart. Something happened with them."

"You think?"

"One way to find out." The song ended, and Erick tilted his head in the direction of the bar. "Can I tempt you with a drink and some subtle espionage?"

Ron smiled and led the way to the bar. They'd taken a big step together today, he and Ron. They hadn't talked about it since, but the decision was out there now. And the world hadn't ended. On the contrary, deciding to make it permanent lifted a weight Erick hadn't realized he'd been struggling around with on his shoulders. Ron seemed happier, too, and gave Erick a little wink as they approached Joel.

"You went above and beyond today, Joel," Erick said, breaking into a lull in the other men's conversation. "Bore the rings, brokered a marriage. Well done."

"I did their blood tests, too," Joel said, turning and half-smiling. "Unfortunately, those only check for venereal disease. Not deeply entrenched mutual psychoses."

"At least they found each other," Ron added, smiling. 

"And successfully removed themselves from the dating pool," Joel added in that acerbic way he had, still smiling a little.

"They had a surprisingly tasteful and touching ceremony," Erick added, seeing Ron nod. He hoped that meant Ron saw where he was leading this conversation.

"Eventually, they did," Joel said, rolling his eyes.

"Never pegged Adam for pastels. And I _never_ thought I'd see Maggie in head-to-toe pink like that," Ron added. _Perfect_ , Erick thought. He had his opening, and it had only taken them about forty-five seconds to get there. They made a hell of a team, he and Ron. 

"Where is she anyway, Joel?" Erick delivered his next line casually, guilelessly.

Joel's body language immediately changed and his answer was terse. "I don't know. I'm not her keeper," Joel stood and pulled his wallet from his pants pocket and deposited bills next to his unfinished bottle. "Early morning tomorrow, too. I'll see you guys. 'Night." Joel took the tuxedo jacket that had been slung over the back of his chair and pulled it on on his way to and then out the door. Maurice watched him go and then glared at Ron and Erick. 

"What's with him?" 

"The boy's a doctor. Which means he doesn't have time for gossip and girl talk with you two. I know I sure don't," Maurice said as he rose in a huff and stormed off, leaving Ron and Erick and alone next to Ed. Joel's reaction Erick had expected - Maurice's, though...

"Okay, what's with _him_?"

"Oh," Ed's gentle voice began. "Maurice is just mad on account of he lost the bet no one's supposed to know is going on. And Dr. Fleischman's not happy, for the same reason Maurice lost. But a lot more unhappy than Maurice." He took a sip from the glass of soda in front of him. "And he doesn't even know about the bet." 

Ron and Erick exchanged a quizzical look. Joel was easy to read and lead through a conversation. Maurice, too. Ed was a blank slate. Ron tried to play dumb.

"Bet?"

"I'm really not supposed to talk about it." Ed took a nervous sip.

That hadn't worked. Time for honesty. "The one about Maggie and Joel?" Erick supplied. "We know about it."

"We're two hundred dollars deep in it already," Ron added, smiling. "You're breaking no confidences. We promise."

"Oh, well, okay then. Maurice had last week. For his bet. And he lost."

"So? He's lost a fair number of times already. And he has bales of money to waste. What's worse about this time? And what's Maurice losing have to do with Joel's surly attitude?"

Ed blushed and looked down at his picked-over basket of fries. "Just...well... Maggie and Joel went to Juneau together last week. Not on purpose together; just ended up that way. And Maurice got real real _real_ close to winning. Except he didn't. And Maggie got kinda mad at Dr. Fleischman, and he got kinda mad back at her. So now Dr. Fleischman and Maggie are avoiding each other."

"You know, Ed, you probably know Joel better than most. You could make a pretty penny in this."

"I don't really gamble on account of if I knew I were going to win, I'd feel bad about taking someone else's money. And if I knew I were going to lose, well, then, it just wouldn't make sense to give money away like that. And it really only ends one of those two ways. So I don't gamble."

"You're missing out," came Shelly's voice. "Just tonight, the odometer rolled over another click. We're up to five big ones now." She smiled at Ron and Erick. "Fill you boys up?"

"No, we're headed home. Ed was just telling us something about a close call for Maurice, by way of Joel and Maggie?"

"Omigosh, you haven't heard! Have you? You _haven't_! They had to share a hotel room in Juneau and totally almost got squinchy together! But they didn't, except for awhile she thought they _did_ and acted all funny around him. He finally told her they _didn't_ and she got so royally pissed at him for not doing it that she almost killed him. Then Ruth Anne told her if she was gonna be messed up over it anyway, she might as well have some fun in the process. She left Eve's shower two minutes later, toilet paper veil still on and everything! Don't know what happened after that, but they can hardly look at each other today."

"But they didn't...right?"

"That's the thing - _no one knows_. Maurice tried to argue that meant they did and so he won, but Ruth Anne said he was an old coot who didn't know people one bit. So she just asked Maggie straight out," Shelly said, drying her hands off on a bar towel before leaning in conspiratorially. "And she said Maggie just got all dreamy eyed and said she wouldn't say. And Maggie tells her _everything_. So _I_ asked her. And all she said was that Joel was a great kisser. But she seemed real bummed about it when she told me so I can't tell if that means they didn't or they _did_ and it just wasn't any good." Shelly shrugged, picking put a water pitcher. "But with how they are, it just had to be. Especially if she said he's a good kisser." She left with the pitcher and another shrug. "Then again, Maggie's weird about guys she likes, so who knows," she said over her shoulder.

Erick noticed Ed staring hard at his food. _Ed_ knew.

"He say anything to you, Ed?"

"Not really."

Ron pushed a little. "C'mon... nothing? He's been in a mood like that all day, and he didn't say anything - you don't know why?"

"Well..." Ed started softly, before looking up, a serious expression on his face. "I do know why. But he didn't say anything. On purpose. On account of it being about Maggie. With Dr. Fleischman, about her, at least, when he says nothing, I know it's because there's something. And if he didn't want to talk to me about it, I don't think he we wants me to, you know, talk about it with anyone else."

Ron met Erick's eye over the top of Ed's head and slowly nodded. That was fair - no need to push Ed on this. Erick sat down next to Ed. 

"You're probably right. Hey, why didn't you shoot their wedding for them? Eve and Adam's? You have that movie camera, right?"

"My Paillard 16mm...yeah," he said, smiling like a proud father. "Oh, but Adam said 'no, thank you, Ed', when I offered. He meant to say that, at least. What he said was that he'd take out my gall bladder with a rusty sardine can if I filmed him or his wedding. So I figured it was lucky I didn't have any blank film anyway." Ed paused a moment before continuing quitely. "You guys ever see It Happened One Night? Frank Capra movie? 1934? Claudette Colbert and..."

"...Clark Gable?" Ron finished. "Yeah. That's a great movie."

"It won all the big categories of Oscars that year - best picture, best director, best actor, best actress, _and_ best screenplay. Only it, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Silence of the Lambs have gotten all five."

"I'd heard that somewhere," Erick added, trying to recall what else he could about the film.

"Great cinematography, too. Moving camera, cuts between long shots and close-ups. It's a great story, too. They meet. They don't get along. But can't get away from each other. Then they travel together and realize they've started to like each other. And so before you know it, we're on to act two. Ellie and Peter are, in the movie. But Maggie and Joel, too. What I mean is, whatever happened in Juneau pushed them out of act one and on to act two. And everything's different. So now, there has to be a misunderstanding. And then a conflict. So they can move apart and come back together for the big conclusion. The finale, I mean."

"Which'll be...when, exactly?" Ron asked, smiling.

Ed just shook his head, gave them both a friendly wave goodnight and a smile, stood, and walked out the front door.


	6. The Admission

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ed's perspective - set during _Northwest Passages_

Ed pulled back on the oar, trying to pull hard enough to keep them moving fast but not so fast as to jostle the canoe or, more specifically, Maggie laying in it. He knew when he'd pulled with too much of a jerk if Joel winced after Ed's pull. Joel only winced when Maggie winced, and he was wincing more and more, even though Ed was rowing as smoothly as he could.

Ed rowed faster alone than with Joel helping, like he'd done on the way up. Some of it was going downstream this time; some of it was Joel. Joel was lots of things - smart, a good doctor, and a guy with a pretty good golf swing - but even Ed had to admit, he was awful at rowing a canoe. No need to say that, of course, but somehow, even with all his motion and effort, none of it translated to moving the boat forward through the water. They'd agreed without even talking about it that Ed would guide them back.

"Ed, how far still?" Joel's voice was terse but quiet. This was the only conversational topic Joel seemed willing to tolerate. Ed knew what answer he wanted, and they were finally close enough that he could give it to him.

"Not very, Dr. Fleischman. Couple more turns. And I know I said that last time you asked, and then you got mad at me on account of, well, this river is all turns and no straight parts, and then also on account of that there's just too much of Alaska. And even though me and you don't mean the same number, I don't think, when we say 'a couple', this time..."

"Give it to me in minutes Ed," Joel said, sounding impatient. "Please," he added, quickly. He wasn't angry, Ed knew, he was scared about Maggie, so his 'please' was really an 'I'm sorry' in disguise. He talked in disguise a lot, Joel did.

"Ten. We're really close now. Honest..." Ed hesitated, wanting to ask his question but worried from Joel's look about the answer. "How is she?"

"Not great, Ed," Joel said, without looking up. Maggie lay stretched out between them, still partially wrapped in her sleeping bag, with her head in Joel's lap. He was stroking her arm and holding a cloth to her head that he kept recooling in the river's icy water as they sailed along. He'd taken the needle out of her arm when the IV bag had finally emptied itself. Ed pictured the medicine moving swiftly through Maggie's veins like the three of them gliding along in this canoe, getting closer and closer to where it needed to be.

The start of their journey home had been hard on everyone. Maggie was obviously in pain with tears in her eyes, her face squinched up as waves of discomfort came. Those faces and her not making a lot of sense and claiming to have had a picnic lunch with her dead boyfriend Rick before, Joel said were really bad signs. Especially that last one. Her quieting down, Ed hoped, was a good sign that the medicine had started working, but Joel only seemed more worried.

"Is she still hurting?"

"Of course she is," Joel said, his tone of voice frustrated but as patient as he could manage. "It's not going to resolve of its own accord, Ed. She has acute appendicitis." He dipped the cloth into the water again, wringing the excess water out with one hand before putting it gently back across her forehead. "Her body's suffering from a massive infection, not to mention that her appendix is about the size of a lemon. And I can't give her anything to help that because she's going to need to have surgery right away."

"Right here in the canoe?" Ed had asked and he could see Joel respond with a rare smile, still without looking up from Maggie. He hadn't been joking but was glad to see Joel smile all the same.

"I was thinking more along the lines of a hospital, Ed."

Ed nodded and thought about how to phrase his next question for awhile before asking it. Sometimes when he blurted things out, the meaning would evaporate more quickly than Joel could grab onto it, and then Joel'd get annoyed with him because he'd only catch a part of what Ed had intended as the whole. 

"But...Dr. Fleischman, there aren't any hospitals around here. Normally, when someone needs one, too, well, you know...Maggie's the one to get 'em there."

"I know that, Ed." Joel was stroking Maggie's hair now and still hadn't looked up at Ed.

"Fleischman?" Joel jumped a little. Maggie hadn't said anything recognizable since they'd left her campsite. It was the longest Ed had ever been near them in silence like this. Normally, they were like a chain reaction of conversation, Joel and Maggie, like neither could bear to let the other one be the last to have spoken.

Half the town had money on something happening between them, Ed knew. Ed didn't gamble himself - on anything - but he also didn't see the point. Betting on that Joel and Maggie would end up together was like betting that the sun would come up. One only needed to wait.

Two hours ago, as Joel and he had struggled up the river in the canoe, still looking for Maggie's campsite, Joel had let something slip Ed knew he wouldn't have normally. In fact, Joel was so far from normal today that he didn't even realize he'd done it. Not that Ed was prying...

"How long is this river?" Joel asked for the third time since they'd set off.

"Dunno," Ed had said. "But I've never found the end of it."

"That's just great. Thanks, Ed. Real reassuring."

"You worried about her?"

"'Course I am. Until she's in a hospital, we have to worry about her going toxic on us. Spleen bursting. Appendix. Whatever turns out to be wrong with her. Which is all I can think about currently. That and how this river keeps going and going. And no thanks to you. What'd you put that letter writing idea in her head for anyway?"

"Thought it'd help. She seemed worried about turning 30, you know."

"Not with me, she didn't. And anyway, she ought to have been more worried about the potential of _not_ turning 30..." Joel shook his head in a vigorous 'no', as if to eject the idea from it completely. "Nevermind. Just...that woman is the source of all things unpleasant in my life. Why would she be compelled to write letters to a parade of worthless boyfriends she's still somehow hung up on?"

"Love makes people do crazy things," Ed said, shrugging. "Or that's what they say in movies, at least."

"Yeah, well, tell me about it. It's why I'm spending my day rowing a canoe up to God knows where and preparing to engage in battlefield medicine..." Joel trailed off, his eyes on his oar entering the water. "How far are we, do you think - from her campsite, I mean?"

Ed smiled, surprised but, at the same time, not all that shocked, at what Joel had just said. "Not too far now. Just a couple more bends of this river..."

Joel nodded, his eyes meeting Ed's for a second before looking back at his oar. He could tell Joel hadn't realized what he'd said. Ed wondered whether he'd even realized himself what he felt.

Ed looked at Joel and Maggie now, Joel's head down close to hers, hoping to hear her speak. His fingers were still in her hair, his other hand pressing the cloth to her forehead.

"Fleischman?" came Maggie's voice again, her eyes still closed.

"Yeah?" Joel leaned down closer and put one hand back down on her arm. "I never thought I'd say this to you, for as often as you yell at me, but I can barely hear you, O'Connell." Even Ed could hear that his heart wasn't in teasing her.

"Is this my canoe?"

"Yeah."

"You're not driving it, are you?"

"No, Ed's got the oar. And the map. I'm just along for the ride to play doctor. You really redefined 'remote' with your campsite selection, didn't you?"

"Is any of this your fault?"

He seemed a real smile. "No. Sorry. Not this time. You've got an inflamed appendix. Remember?"

"Oh... 'splains why my stomach hurts like crazy...ow! " She'd tensed her left hand into a fist, and Joel's smile faded.

"I know it does... I'm sorry..."

"I really don't feel good either... Am I gonna be okay?"

"Yeah. Of course you are." Even Ed noticed he sounded unconvinced and worried. He hoped Maggie hadn't heard it. "It's a pretty easy procedure. Laparoscopic surgery is barely anything these days." He did better on that second try, at least. Joel was the smartest guy Ed knew and a very good doctor. But he'd never cast him in any movie of his - his honesty and the way he wore everything he felt in his eyes made him a terrible actor. Luckily for Maggie, her eyes were closed. And she was a little delirious. 

"Surgery? You're gonna do surgery on me?" Joel had been right - her voice was quieter than Ed had ever heard it. Quieter, even, than when she and Ruth Anne talked about things they didn't want him to overhear sometimes in the general store. Things he pretended he didn't. Her words were slurring, too, but what she'd said this time made Joel smile again, and even laugh a little.

"No. I promise. I won't lay a hand on you, if that's what you're worried about. No chance. We're gonna try to fly you to Anchorage, okay? Or Mat-Su would even be good. Depends on who can get here faster."

"No, no, no. You need to do it."

"You want _me_ to do it? O'Connell, you second-guess every step of every blood draw I've ever done. You told me I put a bandaid on you wrong once. But you want me to remove an _organ_ of yours? This has to be your fever talking. I've never done an appendectomy. I was terrible on my surgical rotation. Not to mention the fact that you think I'm completely incompetent. Look, we'll get you somewhere as soon as we can, okay, I promise. Somewhere with legitimate, exeprienced, board certified surg-"

"If you aren't going to do it, then you have to promise me you'll stay with me the whole time. Okay?"

"O'Connell, I will endeavor to give the medics every relevant fact, every detail of your medical history, and every threat I can come up with to make sure they know you need to be in good hands when you get to the hospital, but the fact of the matter is those guys won't ever let anyone go who's not -"

She grabbed the hand that had been stroking her left arm, holding it tight with her right hand. Joel looked down at it in surprise. "Promise?"

He didn't miss a beat as he did a complete about-face. "Promise. I will be there the whole time. You have my word."

"Okay." She nodded, her face relaxed, and she went quiet again. Joel cast a worried look Ed's way. He didn't let go of her hand until they reached the shore by Joel's truck.

As it turned out, Holling and Ruth Anne had decided to call for an air ambulance just before Ed, Joel, and Maggie pulled back into town. The ambulance was really a helicopter. It landed right on Main Street and everything. Well, not exactly in the middle, but down it, away from the buildings, where it met with with the road leading out of town. Everyone came out to watch. More people turned up to this than the Founder's Day parade and even more than Maurice's 55th birthday party, when he closed the streets so everyone could watch the fighter jets fly over like he'd paid for them to do. Ed wished Maggie could have seen it, since she was a pilot and all, but she'd fallen asleep right after they'd gotten the canoe to the shore. That made Joel even more tense, her sleeping. He'd stopped talking to Ed altogether at that point. He rode sitting in the bed of the truck with Maggie stretched out, her head in his lap, still holding her hand.

Ed tried to start their conversation up again once the medics had gotten in the truck to check Maggie, as Joel jumped out and started quickly unloading some of the items from the cab.

"You think they're going to -"

"You've got my keys, still, right? Keep my truck until we get back," Joel said, cutting Ed off. He pulled his wallet out of the glove compartment and put it hurriedly into his back pocket. He glanced at the medics as they put Maggie onto a stretcher, before looking back at Ed and starting to talk even faster. "You can go back and get that canoe, or...whatever. I put my physician's bag behind my front seat. Before you go anywhere, give it to Marilyn, and tell her what's happened, okay? Tell her to put it in my cabinet for me. She's going to have to close my office, too. I don't know when we'll be back."

"You're going?"

"Yeah. Can you handle all of that, what I just told you?" 

Ed tried to imagine what Cicely would look like from above - falling further and further below, its familiar streets and features blurring together as he'd rise from it.

"Ed!" Joel sounded more irritated than worried now. "Grant me some sign of sentient behavior, will you? Did you hear anything I just said?" He was tugging now at the class ring he wore on his right hand.

"Yeah, sorry. I'll get the message - and the bag - to Marilyn. Get that canoe. You're really lucky, you know."

"How's that, exactly," Joel asked, his voice straining as he tugged once more and the ring popped suddenly free. He turned abruptly and started to the helicopter, and Ed followed at his elbow.

"Just, well, I think it'd be a lot of fun. See the town from up high. And it'd different from a plane because-"

"Ed, I'm scared to death of helicopters," Joel said quietly as he stopped abruptly and half-turned to face Ed. He looked an interesting shade of pale. Or green, Ed wasn't sure which. "Let's not talk about it anymore. Look. Tell Marilyn. Give her my bag. I'll call Holling at the Brick when I have news, okay?"

"You want I should take your ring, too, Dr. Fleischman?"

"Huh?" Joel said, eyeing the helicopter warily as the air medics put Maggie's stretcher into it. The rotors had started up and the noise was already loud enough that he'd had to lean close to Ed to be heard.

"Your ring," Ed gestured to Joel's hands. "You took it off; you want me to give it to Marilyn, with your bag and other stuff?

Joel gave Ed a sly smile. "No, no. It's my ticket on board." He patted Ed's shoulder as he started forward. "Thanks for helping me save her." 

"Wish her good luck from me. And tell her -" Ed started, but stopped when he realized Joel couldn't hear him anymore, and not just because of the helicopter noise. He'd disappeared back into his own head again. Ed saw him take a breath, bend forward, and start towards Maggie.

The medics had her inside the helicopter now and were tending to her. They saw Joel approach, shook their heads, and waved him back. He lifted up his left hand, pointing to it with his right and then to Maggie. Ed could see the red stone of his class ring facing inward towards Joel's palm. Whatever he'd said made them let him in with Maggie, and Ed saw him fumbling with a seatbelt and the ear protection headset they gave him, while taking her hand as the doors closed. He looked at least another shade darker of whatever color he'd been turning.

After that, the helicopter ascended, as the crowd moved forward to watch it turn and fly over downtown on its way westward.

"Primo," Shelly said, with awe in her voice. "You ever seen a helicopter land and take off like that?"

"Me? No. Just when they go overhead sometimes," Ed responded. "They're real loud down low like this one was."

"Yeah, pretty bitchin'. Dr. F.'s so lucky. When my girlfriend Sheri's boyfriend got tanked after they lost the semi finals and crashed his motorcycle, they had to take him to Royal in Saskatoon in one of those things. Gnarly road rash that made his arm like look like hamburger meat. She almost tossed her cookies right there in the middle of Highway 11. They had to call in a helicopter to get him there. Sheri was bummin' because they were like, no way, you can't go. Dr. F. got to get right on, though. He's probably psyched."

"No. But he promised her he'd go with her."

"With Sheri, they said just family could go. She even told 'em they'd been goin' out for a year and a half which is as close to family as you get, but they didn't care. They were really mean about it, too. But I guess it's different 'cause Dr. F.'s a doctor, huh?"

"Yeah..."

The glint shining off the sparkling red stone against Joel's palm before was suddenly in Ed's mind, and he was willing to bet he knew exactly what Joel had said he was to get himself on board, and it had nothing to do with his job. Of course, Ed didn't gamble...


	7. The Contrast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jeffie's POV during Grosse Point 48230

Four words. In four words, he'd had all the proof he needed that this one was different. He'd suspected as much a few times before. But this made it irrefutable.

So far, Maggie'd hidden him. First from Frank, and then from their mother the next year, when Jane had visited Maggie's little square of tundral squalor. She'd said he was out of town for the week, doing a vaccination clinic in the northern part of the state. That lie lasted as long as it took Jane to saunter past the town doctor's office, confirm he was indeed there, and introduce herself. It pissed Maggie off but paled in comparison with Jane burning her house down, so the her mother's tampering was quickly forgotten.

She'd always been an adept liar, his sister. Particularly when it came to relationships. And her feelings. Both were topics this family kept hidden, guarding them closely and jealously...and with a bit of shame. Never let 'em see you cry, his dad coached them both. Some lesson, Jeffie thought to himself. Both parents divorced, he was likely headed that way, and Maggie, well, who the hell knew. But she never cried. Despite her history.

Before Joel, Maggie'd had two boyfriends that he knew of - the writer and the pilot. His mother made stray remarks, often under her breath, that led him to believe that there might have been others and that his baby sister wasn't as chaste as he preferred to believe her to be. He didn't dwell on the thought, and he'd never met either guy. Both had died. Which was odd. She never talked about it. Which wasn't.

He and Maggie weren't close, the way they showed siblings on tv - friends or even friendly, with an intimate knowledge of each other's lives. They had their own friends, their own worlds, growing up. Theirs was an amicable enough relationship, but one strung together mostly with sarcasm and a mutual disdain for their parents. Plus, Jeffie was five years older - just old enough that Maggie never made much of a playmate, but close enough in age to make her his obligation. _Watch out for your sister_ , came his mother's refrain, _she could get hurt_. Maggie spent half her childhood toddling after him, trying to keep up and do what he did. He grudgingly accepted that his role was to be protective of her, too; not that she needed it. Maggie was tough as nails with a tongue to match. Their arguments, though few, were legendary. She was still the only girl who'd ever made him cry. Twice. Both times just with something she'd said in anger. Not that the girl didn't have a hell of a right hook.

Mostly, though, they got along. Jeffie had his world, and she had hers. The one they shared - the O'Connell family, the vacations, the glad-handing social events their father's job compelled, the country club - they'd both been eager to grow up and take their place in. Something changed, though, his first summer back from college at Michigan. He'd left his cheerful kid sister behind and returned to a snapping, surly, contrarian teenager - a phase she never seemed to grow out of.

No amount of pushing by Jane or Frank was sufficient to break through her protracted rebellion, either. Maggie had traded little miss pageants and junior league cotillions for sailing with the guys from the club and smoking stolen cigarettes from Jane's purse behind the garage. 

Fearing for her social life, Jane made a call and had gotten Maggie a spot on the cheerleading squad; in return, Maggie had stalked the sidelines with limp pompoms, dark eyeliner, and a thousand yard glare. She'd kept on smoking in secret. And as for boys...well, Jeffie didn't need to know about that. But he knew his mother was continually disappointed by her choices there, too.

Academics were another disappointment. Maggie was smart and had always said she'd follow in her dad's footsteps and major in business - like Jeffie had - only to graduate with a completely unmarketable bullshit degree in antiquities and then move to France for 6 months with no plan. At Jane's urging, Frank pulled strings to get Michigan Law to accept a late-submitted application; everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Of course, Maggie aced the LSATs but didn't even show up to her 1L finals. So much for law school.

As if that weren't bad enough, her encore was to follow a failed writer six years her senior to Alaska in 1988. This was the first dead boyfriend, before he'd gotten himself dead, of course. She earned her pilot's license 4 months later, and here they all sat, still waiting for her to come back. But there she stayed. Settling down seemed entirely out of the question for her. Jeffie cringed anytime his friends would ask what his sister was doing these days. Grosse Pointe didn't take well to black sheep.

All of this meant Joel was a welcome beacon of hope. Jeffie still remembered his mother first pointing out him out in Maggie's letters. "Frank, dear, did you see that this Joel is a doctor? Ivy League. And Maggie's mentioned him _twice_ in this letter here. I think I remember seeing his name in the last one, too." 

Jeffie tried to ask her about him once, too, but he only came out of the conversation confused. _Who, Fleischman? You've gotta be kidding me. Jeffie, he is the most arrogant, stubborn, narcissistic... I would rather have both kidneys removed by rabid grizzly bears than spend two minutes...oh, but don't tell Mom we aren't dating, okay?_ Somewhere in there a second guy, also a pilot, came along. He died, too. 

Frank met him once - not the dead one, but Joel. Liked him, even, which was saying something. Nothing was ever good enough for their dad - Jeffie had a inferiority complex a mile wide as a result, not that he'd ever let it show. He presumed Maggie did, too. Her goals should have been clear. Marry well. Do well. Live well. Not burn out in some redneck town in the middle of Siberia. Which was where Joel came in. _Dr. And Mrs._ ...whatever the hell his name was. And Greenwich, Connecticut, where all the rich professionals who worked in New York lived, could be an excellent stand-in for Grosse Pointe. If not an upgrade. 

It had been three years now, judging from her letters and phone calls, that they'd had something going (give or take whatever happened with the now-dead pilot), giving Joel the distinction of being the longest relationship of Maggie's life. Even that, though, wasn't the thing that tipped Jeffie off that Joel was something different. His mom had sealed it yesterday, with those four little words.

"Your sister's bringing someone."

Jeffie hadn't understood at first. "Someone like..."

"Someone like a boyfriend. That doctor she's been seeing. Joel."

"Bringing him _here_?! And she said they weren't dating." _Several times_ , Jeffie thought to himself, _and in the tone of voice a mob boss would use while pressing their foot to someone's neck_. He remembered too late he wasn't supposed to have told his mother that. She was nonplussed, of course.

"Well, maybe she _said_ that. But you know Mary Margaret."

"I do. I think. Which is why I doubt she's seeing a doctor. She goes out of her way to find the least motivated, most embarrassingly low-rent guy she can, usually. Which isn't hard, given where she lives."

"Yes, but everyone grows up eventually, Jeffrey. Even your sister. And she's bringing him home with her. I just hope she's letting her hair grow back out, too. Before she scares him off. Or develops a Y chromosome..."

When Maggie came through the front door, her hair was indeed cropped quite short - shorter than Jeffie'd ever seen it, but longer than what Jane had described. And beside her was the famous Joel. 

Jeffie wasn't sure what he'd expected exactly, but Joel wasn't it. At all. Short, dark features, skinny. Maggie usually went for the tall muscular type. And stupid. Easy to control. This Joel wasn't stupid. Far from it. Beyond being a doctor, every time Jeffie looked his way, he could see him thinking - making mental notes on each person he met. Their names, of course, but also how they fit into the assembled group, their interests, even their manner of speaking which he'd started to subtly mimic as the conversation dragged on, obviously preparing for how to improve himself for each new round. Jeffie recognized it because his father did the same thing when he worked a room.

Despite that passing resemblance, the person he most reminded Jeffie of was Maggie. Sincere but sarcastic all at once. Good with people but not completely comfortable being the center of attention. Quick witted and cutting with words, but funny. He even had that same sly grin she did, too - the same one Jeffie watched them exchange a few times yesterday and several so far at breakfast, where the two of them sat with he and his mother just now. 

Jeffie was sitting alone at the breakfast table this morning, next to a still-empty place Jane had set out for his wife. _Ex_ -wife, he supposed he should start thinking of her. Last night, he'd tried the passive-aggressive approach - calling into question her follow-through and ability to stand on her own two feet. She needed him; and he needed her to need him. That's what made it work between them. She'd said four little words of her own, though - _No, I'm leaving you_ \- but in a tone of voice, though, that he'd never heard before last night. He knew deep down it was the end. Still nursing wounded pride, Jeffie allowed himself a moment to consider that maybe that theirs hadn't been the best relationship. He thought back over what he'd observed of his sister's. 

Joel had made every outward effort to come across as a good boyfriend - held the door for Maggie, carried her bags, and stuck with 'Mrs. O'Connell' long after their mother had invited him to use 'Jane'. Textbook social compact stuff. He was easy to talk to - good with the old biddies his mother always invited over for these things, Stephie, and even new pastor, despite being himself Jewish. Jed hated him, but that was predictable. And, hell, he'd even handed that well. Until he almost killed him.

The two of them were always watching each other, Joel and Maggie, out of the corners of their eyes. Even when apart, they clearly had one ear on the other's conversation and often tossed eye rolls, shrugs, or pointed looks each other's way to participate. They'd catch each other's gaze and flash a grin in a way that made Jeffie feel like they were having a laugh at someone's expense. It was clear that whatever wavelength Maggie operated on, Joel was on it, too, even if the rest of her family wasn't. Where Stephie's life revolved around Jeffie, Maggie and Joel were simply in each other's orbits. After last night, Jeffie found himself suddenly appreciating the distinction. And wondering whether Maggie wasn't telling the Jane the truth about them after all. Even if she didn't realize that herself.

After Stephie's exit, Jeffie'd been left to operate on the periphery of the party, and then just left by himself when the party ended. After they cleaned up together in silence, his mother took one look at him, her eyes expressing sympathy but also fear that he might want to discuss this with her. He let her off the hook by telling her to go to bed and that he'd finish up. They both knew he'd be staying here tonight. He was still awake, nursing a scotch and sitting alone at kitchen table, when Maggie and Joel crept back in together past midnight.

"... can't tell me you actually passed the driver's test, with the way you drive. I need to sit down for a minute, until my equilibrium comes back."

"Oh, stop being a child. I'm a good driver. And anyway, you've driven with me lots of times. Never bothered you before."

"Not in a populated area, I haven't. And we're usually in the air - too far off the ground to have the kind of near-misses we did just now. Then again, you did crash me that time..."

"I'm a great driver and an even better pilot, and you know it."

"And with charm and humility to spare."

Jeffie leaned sideways and saw Joel and Maggie standing close in the dim light of the front hallway. He'd removed his coat and was helping her take off hers. Even as Jeffie's mind decided it didn't need a front row seat to what his sister and her maybe-boyfriend-maybe-not got up to in their evening hours, his curiosity was getting the better of him. Was this a ruse on Maggie's part? She sure seemed to like him. Was it possible Joel was taking advantage of her? _Watch out for your sister_ , his mother's words echoed in his head, _she could get hurt_. So he kept watching as she finished hanging their coats and glared playfully at Joel, her hands on her hips.

"You're just mad about the Knicks."

"No. I'm mad at your smug gloating. You couldn't care less about basketball but somehow, for two hours tonight, you became the biggest Pistons fan on earth. Just to spite me."

"Spite you? They're my hometown team," she said, with hardly any effort at sounding sincere. "Of course I'm a fan. Big fan."

"Fine. Name the Pistons' starting power forward, then." _It's Rodman, Mag. Come on. You know this_ , Jeffie thought to himself, _or should, at least_. She never cared about sports growing up. Or now. All three of them knew it, too.

"Which position is that again?" She was stalling and not even trying to pretend thay she wasn't.

Joel laughed. "The tallest guy in the middle. We just watched him playing an hour ago. For your 'favorite team'. He's pretty memorable, on and off the court... Hell, if you can name any player on the current roster for me, I'll believe you that your weren't just rooting for them just to spite me."

"You did good today," she said, tilting her head and smiling at him, brushing lint or some other unseen thing from his shoulder. Flirting her way out of trouble. "You came across as what might pass for sweet, and people actually liked you. Which is surprising."

"Thanks, but I'm not letting you change the subject that easily."

"Too bad; it's done. Really, Fleischman, you handled it well. Even my Grammy liked you - that's no small feat. I think everyone did."

"Your ex-boyfriend hates me." He was wasn't making much effort at hiding his jealousy. Jeffie smiled - that had been his idea, inviting Jed. He figured any boyfriend of Maggie's should be able to withstand trial by fire. Dating her had to be fairly close to that anyway. And if they weren't dating and it was all a sham, Jed'd ferret that out pretty quickly. 

"Who, Jed? Oh, he's harmless. And he's hardly an ex. We just... you know, had a thing that one summer."

"Yeah? Why isn't he dead, then?" Damn, did Joel ever play with fire. Jeffie winced a little in anticipation of Maggie's reaction and was surprised to hear her laugh. 

"No, no. We had a thing, but we didn't... you know." Jeffie had been sure she'd have decked him one, but she just kept on talking in that happy and almost gentle tone he didn't recognize. "I don't always _you know_ with guys, you know."

"Why not him, then? Seems like your type." Oh, God; he realized suddenly he was listening to his little sister talk about her sex life.

"He is _not_ 'my type'. He liked me a lot, but... I never really felt the same way about him, I guess. I don't know. I've never really considered why not..."

"Uh huh. I know why not."

Maggie's irritation snapped back into action, glare returning and arms re-folding. So mocking her dead exes was fine, somehow, but Joel saying he knew her better than she knew herself? _That_ 's what it took to piss her off?

"You do not."

"I do so. Because I know you. And I know why nothing ever happened with him."

"Yeah?" She said, sounding hostile with her arms still crossed and lips pursed. "Why's that, then?"

"You said it yourself - everyone wanted you to marry Jed. So that was the end of Jed." Jeffie chuckled. Pissed or not, Maggie had to know Joel was right. 

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means you only want guys your family hates." Damn if he didn't have her entirely pegged with that.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Uh huh. And why would I do that?"

Jeffie knew why. He was sure Joel did, too. His sister wasn't going to find the answer terribly flattering, though. Joel had no fear, he had to give him that much.

"Because, like them or not, your family knows you well. And if they like a guy, he might work out one day. And then you'll be in love and you won't be in control."

Maggie glared at him. "I'm done with listening to you spout pop psychology for the evening." _Right on target, doctor_ , Jeffie thought to himself. "It's late. And we should go upstairs."

"We're not expected to share a room or anything tonight are we? Tell me this scam doesn't require _that_ degree of commitment by me." Ha! They _were_ faking this. Maybe. But why? All this expense and discomfort just to get Jane off her back for a weekend?

"In _this_ house? Even my parents had separate rooms. No, you're in the guest room next to mine. I'll show you."

They started up the stairs together. "I feel like I really should lock my door tonight," Joel said. "I'd hate to think of you lying there, with me mere steps away. The impulse will probably just gnaw and gnaw at your-

"I'll somehow try to resist the temptation..." she muttered, cutting him off.

After a few seconds, Joel's quiet voice cut through the silence of the front hall.

"Damn. Wait."

"What's wrong now?"

Joel reappeared at the bottom of the stairs, and Jeffie heard Maggie's footsteps descending it again, following him.

"Those pants I was wearing earlier. Your mom took them from me to soak them in something. Get the cranberry juice out."

"You made my _mom_ wash your _pants_ for you?"

"She offered! And phrased that 'offer' in such a way that I didn't have any choice but to accept. Sound familiar? Like mother, like daughter. Where's your laundry room? Or are you guys so upper crust that you hire menial tasks like that out, too?"

"Shut up. Through the kitchen, take a right through the closed door on the far side. I'd bet my next fare that they're not only clean and dry, but pressed and hanging up for you. Jane O'Connell is nothing if not hospitable." Maggie put her hand on her hip again and studied him for a moment. "Well, goodnight, Fleischman. Yours is the second door on the left at the top of the stairs. Bathroom is en suite."

"Of course it is." He paused, watching her watch him. They had such a strange dynamic, Jeffie had decided. Sometimes, they were like a nervous couple on their first date and then others like two people who'd been married so long they were finishing each others' sentences. Joel started to smile, which only served to annoy her.

"What now? I have to go to bed."

"What if we're being watched? Don't I owe you a goodnight kiss?"

"Do it and die, Fleischman. 'Night."

She turned as if she were going to go back upstairs. He reached and snagged her hand with his.

"What are you-"

He pulled her hand to his lips and kissed the top of it gently, eyes locked on hers. "Sweet dreams, O'Connell. I'll see you bright and early at what will be the equivalent of three am Alaska time as your charming and devoted boyfriend."

He'd released her hand, but she stood near him in silence for what felt like forever before turning and walking upstairs again.

"I'm hardly charmed by you," was all she could muster, and not very convincingly. The look on her face made Jeffie smile, despite himself. Almost like a glimpse back through time - seeing his playful, cheerful kid sister again.

"Nor I devoted to you," he said, grinning as he watched her go. "And yet here we both are together." He then turned and walked quietly towards the kitchen, moving as if he were afraid of waking someone.

He fumbled along the entry wall for a light switch before giving up and moving carefully ahead, arm extended in the darkness, as if exploring a cave and expecting at any minute to fall into a pit. He clearly hadn't noticed Jeffie. 

"You kept my little sister out an hour past curfew." Jeffie stifled a smile watching Joel startle.

"Sorry. I, uh, didn't know anyone was in here. I was just...um..."

"I know. I overheard you and Mag talking just now. Laundry room's that door there," he said, gesturing. 

Joel disappeared briefly and reemerged holding a hanger with freshly pressed khaki pants slung over it. He hovered awkwardly for a second. "Thanks. I should, uh..."

"Have a seat. Have a drink with me," Jeffie said, pushing the chair opposite him back towards Joel with his foot.

"Thanks, but I'm okay. And I should really..."

"Those Pistons tickets cost $2,200. _Each_."

Joel put his hand on the back of the chair and seemed to consider the statement from several angles, trying to discern the point it made, but come up empty-handed.

"Well, O'Conn - er, uh, _Maggie_ said she-"

"Just thought you'd be interested to know that. And it's a three thousand mile flight. Twice. In two days."

A smile played at one corner of Joel's mouth. "Believe me, I'm well aware of that."

"You must be a huge Knicks fan, to travel all this way, just for one game."

Joel smiled nervously. "'Course I am. I'm from Queens."

"You a Mets fan, too?"

"Nah. I like the...uh, other guys."

"Oh God... leave it Maggie to saddle me with a Yankees fan..."

"Right... I should probably head upstairs. Since it's so late. But, uh, hey, I wanted to say I'm sorry about..." Joel shrugged, and he saw his gaze linger a moment on the ring still on Jeffie's left hand. "Well, you know."

"Stephie? Yeah, well...we'll see how long she's gone. She hasn't lived alone a day in her life. From her parents' house to the sorority house to my house. One spider on the wall, and she'll come undone. She won't even drive at night by herself. Two days of living alone, and she'll be back, ferrying wallpaper samples for our guest bath back and forth from the home center and begging me to get her out of that lease and...I'm a lot more worried about how much that contract she signed is going to cost me when she changes her mind yet again."

He held Joel's gaze to underscore his nonchalance on the topic. He waited to see if he'd successfully blustered his way out of any more sympathy, but it was clear the answer was no. Time for a subject change. And to get the answer he'd been trying to get all day.

"Thousand bucks says you have better luck than I do."

"At...?"

"Marriage."

Joel chuckled. "Well, you owe me a grand. I'm 0 for 1 so far."

"You've been married before?"

"Engaged. Once. Didn't work out."

"Was that before or after you met Mag?"

Joel's eyes narrowed. "What's that supposed to mean?" Jeffie figured he must have hit pretty close to the mark with that.

"Nothing. Bet's not about the past anyway."

"Yeah? So what is the bet?"

"You're gonna end up my brother-in-law."

Joel laughed heartily if quietly before looking over his shoulder to the front entryway. "You're so lucky she's out of earshot right now...at the risk of her killing me later, I better tell you, you've got this all wrong. I'm not...and we're not... she brought me here to play a certain part. Just for the weekend. I'm not even sure for whose benefit I am performing, but-."

"She brought you here because she wants you here." Jeffie paused and tilted his glass, listening to the ice softly clink against the sides. "I'm serious. I know my sister. And you're it."

Joel's eyes smiled as he tried to keep his face neutral. "If by 'it', you mean one of the only other guys in town who's her age, then..."

"No. _It_. You know what I mean. And you know I'm right, too."

"I promise you, you're reading this all wrong. She's going out with someone else. Or is trying to, at least. The guy in question doesn't really have any 'out' he can go to..."

"I didn't say it'd happen tomorrow. Let's set a time. Say in...3 years. Fair?"

Joel started laughing again quietly. "This is really not the conversation I thought I'd be having tonight. Any night, really."

"You're thinking about it."

"Only because it's such easy money. This is so far outside the realm of a realistic possibility, you couldn't possibly understand. We have absolutely nothing in common, she and I. We're not even friends. I've got a career waiting for me in New York, and she's staying in Alaska, come hell or high water. She's got that plane - I hate flying. She and loves camping and I wouldn't consider sleeping outdoors for all the money in... Suffice it to say there's about ten thousand reasons we wouldn't work." "

"So why not say yes to the bet, then?"

"I don't know. Fairness? It's a badly structured bet. For, you, I mean. For one thing, the outcome depends entirely on me, and I'm the sole beneficiary of one type of action. So who's to say I wouldn't..."

Jeffie smiled and took a small sip from his glass, watching Joel look rattled and nervous. "I've seen how you look at her. You wouldn't throw this bet; you want me to win it too badly. Not that you have any control over any of this. Or her. I'm sure you know that, by now."

Joel didn't say anything, just looked at Jeffie like he wanted to say something but knew better than to. He shook his head, smiled to himself, and extended his hand before pulling it back quickly. "You breathe a word about any of this to her, and I'll kill you. Understood? "

"Likewise. She'd kill us first anyway, if she found out. She's got a temper, that girl."

"Tell me about it," Joel said, smiling and extending his hand once more. "Okay. You're on."

Jeffie shook Joel's hand. "Welcome to the family."


	8. The Revelation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joel's POV during Ill Wind

Well, that was weird. The whole damn day, of course, and particularly that... _thing_ that happened in the barn earlier. But dinner before, at the Brick - that was strange, too. 

Joel was driving home, moving slowly along the dark roads that, by now, he was well-acquainted with, but that still looked alien at night, as if the darkness had the power to fully blanket any familiarity. Like its unique and all-abiding silence or the depths of its cold, Alaska's darkness was something new and powerful and unlike Joel had ever encountered until moving here. Sort of like the draw he felt to Maggie...

He'd already dropped her off at her place, having absolutely no idea where things stood between them. As they pulled up to her house, he'd tried to prepare himself for every outcome along the spectrum of possibilities, from an invitation in and a reenactment of the afternoon's activities, to it dawning more fully on her what they'd done and her breaking his nose a third time. What he got was an affectionate rub to the shoulder, a fond "'night, Fleischman," and a genuine smile before she got out. Well, and that look in her eyes that gave him hope that, even if not tonight, an invitation in wasn't permanently off the table for them anymore. 

They'd given in finally. And had been _so good_. That's what 3 years of foreplay will do, he figured. Not that he'd come out of it unscathed. There was his nose, of course, and then the thin bands of pain streaking across his back where she'd clawed the hell out him. The former still hurt like crazy. The latter, though, well he'd very much _enjoyed_ earning those, particularly with her lips against his ear saying his name in a tone he'd never heard her use before. Normally self-conscious about his performance, he was willing to bet everything he owned that she felt the same way he had about the event.

After that first time, he'd hardly worked up the nerve to turn and meet her eye before she was kissing him again. So then _it_ happened again. And then there were several more _agains_ after that. He'd honestly lost count - it had to have been at least 7 times, if not more. However many there were, he'd shattered several personal records this afternoon. By the last time, he'd been too exhausted for fear, so he hadn't hesitated when asking her, while they gathered up what of their clothes hadn't been ripped beyond repair, "You wanna get dinner with me, O'Connell?" She'd smiled shyly and nodded.

He should have remembered about Mike. Really, at some point during the day's events. When eating together on what felt a hell of a lot like a date. When driving home after that. Certainly when tearing open her puffy green vest so hard the zipper ricocheted into the wall 20 feet away. But her relationship with Mike somehow didn't enter his conscience. And, more tellingly, didn't enter _hers_.

Even though she forgot about Mike, walking into the Brick seemed to quickly jog her memory about literally everyone else in Cicely. She sensed something. At their table, she couldn't get over whatever it was. He'd been busy smiling to himself, catching sight of a strand of hay in her hair and thinking about how her lips were as soft as he'd always imagined they'd be. The image of her sitting across from him blushing - _her_ , blushing! - in a vest and shirt she could no longer close properly kept the smile firmly on his face.

She told him everyone was staring at them, and, worse that they all _knew_. He figured she was just being herself - paranoid, self-centered, and narcissistic - but then Holling called them _you two_...and it felt a little pointed. She blamed him, of course, for giving it away. He had to admit she was probably right. He couldn't quite imagine what his expression revealed at the moment. He'd finally broken his years-long dry streak and with the girl he... well, whatever it was he felt Maggie was to him. So he was damn sure he looked happy. Which, in Cicely, on Joel, was as about good as a flashing neon sign on his face.

Not that she was being subtle. She was blushing and batting her eyes at him, tilting her head and giving him that little private half smile. And that look in her eyes... So, yeah, he had no doubt after Holling left that she was right, and that everybody knew. 

Then she told him that the whole damn town discussed it regularly - their heretofore nonexistent joint sex life. The announcement was her idea. And yet his responsibility somehow. Not that he'd refuse her a damn thing with that look in her eyes and the taste of her lips still on his.

They'd bring gossipers up short, they figured, and just tell everyone straight out. In a move he'd never have believed himself making, he stood up next to Maggie in front of what felt like most of his friends, patients, and neighbors and told them the most personal thing they could. 

He started with, "Maggie and I..." but stopped as fast as he'd started. How in holy hell to finish that sentence? In that pause, the other diners did seem to be hanging on his every word. Maggie hustled him through his awkward pause, and, short of throwing her down on the table and giving everyone a live demonstration of the events which had transpired, he couldn't have been blunter when he did manage to get it out. Except the town couldn't have given less than a shit. And, if anything, seemed annoyed. Which was the weirdest part of the whole day. 

The rest of the night, they ate together - amicably and comfortably, despite the elephant in the room sitting between them. They lingered over a beer together, watching the rest of the bar out of the corner of their eyes, wondering throughout - sometimes out loud to each other - why the hell no one was saying or doing anything differently. 

By the end of the night, he'd gone back to thinking Maggie'd overblown the entire thing and that he'd just developed temporary paranoia by osmosis. Of course no one cared whether the two of them had fooled around or not. Unless it meant treating an STD or delivering a baby 9 months later, he never cared whether anyone else in town was getting any - why should they care about he and Maggie?

He pulled up to his cabin and killed the engine, hoping that weird gasping sound didn't mean he'd flooded it while parking. Whatever - a problem for tomorrow. As was how to relate to Maggie after all of this.

He approached his porch and skipped to the second step, since the lowest one was still broken. He'd asked her about it so many times. He rolled his eyes, fantasizing about living in New York, where he could press charges against a landlord as negligent as Maggie often was. Only this time, the thought of her made him smile again. Uh oh. For the first time that night, he started to worry that hadn't just been about sex, that incident in the barn...

"What the...?" His door was not only unexpectedly unlocked but hanging open two inches. He took a step back and considered heading right back out to his truck and to Maggie's and bringing her back to go in first. Any problems with the lock were really _her_ problems, legally speaking, plus she owned at least two firearms that he knew about. Him showing up at her place again was going to send a signal he knew she would misinterpret, though - particularly if he still didn't know what messages he wanted to be sending her.

He inched forward and pushed the door open wider with his toe. If he could get to his bedroom he could...well, hmmmm. Shit, his only option was bludgeoning someone to death with a 7 iron. He couldn't quite see doing that, and certainly not without hurting himself more than he would any intruder, such being his usual luck.

Ed! Maybe it was just Ed. That actually made a lot of sense. He lacked a working understanding of privacy and had a key to his place. And Joel had a VCR. Yup. Had to just be Ed. He took a deep breath and toed the door the rest of the way open. 

"Ed? You in here?"

"You keep me waiting here all night, and now you call me by the wrong name?" Joel jumped but, thankfully, remembered right away the owner of the surly voice.

"Adam?" Joel fumbled for the light switch.

"You hold your much-vaunted intellect in such high esteem, and we've met so many times, so I fail to understand why, each time, you feel compelled to engage in this protracted charade where you pretend you and I are somehow not -"

"Oh, cut the theatrics, will you?" Joel pulled his puffy mittens off, tucked the fingerless gloves he wore underneath into his parka's pockets, and hung it on the hook beside the door. "It's late, and I'm tired. You want to tell me why I'm entertaining this evening?"

The smile Adam shot back made Joel nervous. Hell, _Adam_ still made Joel pretty nervous. Less than when he'd first met him, of course. And certainly less than when he'd been shackled and held hostage in the woods. He was handling this very calmly, if he did say so himself. If this had been 5 years ago and he'd entered his and Elaine's old apartment in the Village to find someone who looked like a vagrant and had a deranged look in his eye, he'd have called the police. Here, there were no police, and psychotic intruders were just a minor irritant, like the super letting the trash chute overflow or finding a cockroach in the kitchen. Such was the psychological effect of Alaska; he'd probably be in therapy for the rest of his life once he left. 

Joel pulled his now-zipperless army green fleece off and tossed it on his kitchen table before making his way to the chair opposite the coach where Adam was reclining and thumbing through Joel's medical journal.

" _Tired_ , are you?" Adam's smile was still present and still disettling. 

"Yeah. Why?"

"No reason." Joel didn't like that tone. There was always a reason with Adam. "What happened to your shirt?"

Joel felt his face flush. "Caught it. On the, uh, corner of my truck's door. Ripped it." When dressing earlier, he'd buttoned the one button that was still attached, and the rest of his red shirt hung in ragged pieces around it. Maggie was much stronger than she looked. And determined... "So what's up? Why are you here?"

"I need money."

"Join the club," Joel said, leaning forward to snap the periodical from Adam's hands before settling into the chair with it and kicking his feet up on the coffee table. He started paging through it halfheartedly. He'd long ago learned that Adam was always looking for a fight. If he didn't get one, he'd usually lose interest and leave. "I'd think you'd know by now that I'm no help in that department. Persistent urinary tract infection, recurring ulcers, ingrown toenail? I'm your guy. Money? Go bother Maurice. He's got lots of it and nothing better to-"

"Or I could visit the lovely Miss O'Connell."

Joel froze in his paging for a few seconds before starting again and trying to seem neutral on the topic of Maggie. That felt pointed but was probably just a coincidence. The last thing he needed was for Adam to think...

" _She_ 's got money," Adam continued in that same tone. Joel nodded and carefully avoided Adam's gaze. "But you conspicuously forgot to mention her. Then again, you two don't really _get along_. Right? So maybe I _should_ drop by and ask her myself. I wonder whether she's home this evening. She keeps such a full social calendar." Adam paused between each sentence, and Joel steadfastly refused to look up, no matter how long each drew on for. "Do _you_ know what Maggie's been up to lately?"

"No idea," Joel said, trying to sound blase. And failing. Adam sat up quickly and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his full attention on Joel. Oh hell. This was bad. No, no. There was no way that Adam...

"You seem preternaturally cheerful tonight, Fleischman."

Joel shrugged. Adam didn't know. He just didn't. He _couldn't_. And so if Joel could just work out what Adam was after, he could end this conversation and send Adam on his way....

"And _tired_ , of course. Even so, playing tangletoes in a barn all afternoon has seemed to counteract completely the effects of a period of celibacy that's spanned...well, now, Doctor, how long has it been for you, exactly? Two years? Since Elaine visited and you did this last?"

Shit. Joel looked up cautiously. Maybe there was an explanation and Adam had just...

He was grinning triumphantly back at him. Nope. He knew. He'd seen them, too. Oh _God_...

"So what happened? Just that classic all-American love story, huh? Boy meets girl, boy hates girl, girl pretends she likes another boy, and then everything finally comes undone on a 15 degree day in February? 

"I don't know what you're talking ab-"

"Spare me. You two cost everyone in town, including myself, a significant sum of money with that little bit of in flagrante delicto this afternoon."

"What, with the...barn thing? Not that there _was_ a...thing. I was just, you know, helping her with some wiring she was doing."

"Yes. Because you're quite the electrician. You couldn't have waited two weeks? I've got newborn at home!"

"What in the hell are you talking about?"

"Are you hard of hearing? Your lack of sexual self-control took fifteen grand off my table."

"Me having sex earns you money? No wonder you're broke."

"No, you and Maggie choosing _today_ of all days to finally give into your sad little mutual crush lost me a bet."

"You've been _gambling_? On whether O'Connell and I - First her brother, and now you?!"

"Everyone has," Adam said, smugly, rocking back on the couch again, plopping his dirty, bare feet up on the armrest. God, he'd have to fumigate the entire place at this point. "Didn't either of you notice the chilly reception you received at dinner tonight, with your self-indulgent little announcement?"

"Have you been following me around town all day?"

"Was it good?"

Joel tried to force the smile off his face, opened his mouth, and then stopped himself. "Was _what_ good?"

"Such a gentleman you are, playing coy like that in defense of your lady's reputation. I presume it was the pinnacle of your dear diary moments to date. But that she's probably had better."

Joel chuckled acerbicly. "Yeah, well, then explain to me the claw marks she left crisscrossing my ba..." Joel paused. Shit. Adam was about as good as Maggie was at pitting his ego against his ethics. "Nevermind."

"She break your nose, too?"

"Yes. Twice. But not during any alleged barn-based activities. Did you need something? Or did you just come here to pry into my non-existent personal life and make false accusations?"

"Fifty bucks."

"What?"

"Give me fifty dollars, and I'll go away."

"No! I am not an ATM."

"Fine," Adam said, rising in a huff. "I'll go ask your latest conquest. She's still probably still in that cheerful post-coital glow, just like you, and you know how girls love to gossip about..."

"Okay, okay. Here," Joel stood and pulled two twenties and a ten from his wallet. "Don't even think of discussing this with O'Connell. Okay? Promise?"

Adam reached for the bills and Joel pulled them back out of reach. "Tell me you promise."

" _Protective_ , are we?" Adam snapped the money from his hand and started examining the bills. "Fine."

"Oh, give me a break. It's all there."

"I'm checking for magentic tracking strips. You do know the federal reserve keeps a massive database of ...Nevermind... These look clean," he turned and headed for the door.

"So you're leaving? Just like that? You take all but my last seven dollars and... You aren't going to her place, are you? You gave me your word. Sort of."

"Fascinating as this little soap opera is, no. I've got a bet to place."

Joel moved quickly to stand in front of the door, blocking Adam's exit.

"That's twice now you've implied there's some kind of a wager going on. Are you saying that other people also have money on O'Connell and I..."

"Horizontally oscillating together in the hay? Yes. Only not now. You guys picked the single week in the last 2 years that no one had money on you. People are furious. And they had to rewrite the bet and roll the kitty forward."

"To when? And for what? Sex? I hardly think there's a danger that happens again. It's out of both of our systems now." Even as he said it, he hoped - no, _knew_ \- that wasn't true.

"You know, denial's a powerful impediment to overcoming psychological disorder. And step one is admitting you have a problem."

"She's also dating that hypochondriatic agoraphobe. Or trying to."

"Mike?" Adam laughed and reached around Joel for the doorknob. "He's not sticking around. Now, if you don't mind, I have a-"

"Wait. Mike's leaving? Why? How do you know? When?"

"Don't get your stethoscope twisted in a knot. You know Maggie. She's not letting any man get out of here until he's made her as miserable as she intends to make you."

"What's that supposed to mean?

"After your little tete-a-tete this afternoon, she's going to fully dedicate herself to using him to prove that you don't mean anything to her. And you know her track record. Once she's comfortable he's not going anywhere, he's gone."

" _Dead_?!" 

"No. They don't all die on her. Just seems that way."

"Where's he going, then? He can barely leave that ridiculous dome he's in to get his own mail. Unless I'm right, and he's imagined this whole..."

"I know some people at Greenpeace. He's going to receive some interesting literature next week about their organization. So don't say your fifty bucks wasn't money well spent with me. And don't worry, Fleischman, this dysfunctional little love story has a happy ending, where the self-absorbed boy gets the self-deluded girl for longer than a sordid afternoon. Only _after_ she breaks your heart as good as she broke your nose, though. Good night, Don Juan." He pulled the door open and stepped through it past Joel, slamming it behind him. 

_Greenpeace_? _A bet_? _Maggie and Mike_? _And then Maggie and...him_? Joel yanked the door open stepped quickly out onto his porch. But Adam was already long gone, enveloped by the unrelenting darkness of the Alaskan night.


	9. The Intercession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam's POV, post Ill Wind

He jimmied the pinch pin into the lock a hair further and listened for the next pin to move. One more and the lock would open. He was careful to stay low, curled in the floorboard of the Cadillac parked along Main Street. The next pin finally moved, and he eased the glove box open at last as he looked at his watch. Thirty four seconds. He was losing his touch.

Movement at the driver's side instinctively made him flinch, even though he knew no one in this town would notice his nefarious activity. _Allegedly_ nefarious. He intended to replace Maurice's wallet in a few hours and was only borrowing his driver's license briefly. It was Alaska's fault, if anyone's - frequent changes to the useless security features of the licenses necessitated repeated forgery. What was he supposed to do, anyway? He had to travel. And he certainly couldn't under his own name. Not with his history.

He lifted his head just high enough to confirm the interloper was now gone. Interloper _s_ \- it had been two people, walking close. He lowered his head again to slip the wallet free from the rest of the trash occupying Maurice's glove box when the identities of two people walking past him registered. He lifted his head back up to peer over the dash.

Walking very close and in lockstep with each other were the town's doctor and his... well what could he call her?

Certifiably crazy was a good start. Combative, defensive, and easily angered by her own innate vulnerability. And bossy.

Joel, of course, was crazy, too - a misanthropic loner, insecure, and yet also pompous to a fault. But needy. Helpless, really. 

Which was why they were drawn to each other. And why neither would admit they wanted the other. And why what happened yesterday wasn't a surprise. Apart from when it had happened. Adam had put money on the thaw. Most people went crazy, waiting for the seasonal ice break, and these two were perpetually halfway out of their minds as it was. Couple that with the lurid designs they had on each other and it was inevitable. He'd missed by only two weeks. Spring had come rather early this year, it appeared, and with those damn winds. So here he was out fifteen grand.

He sat up in the driver's seat. Damn, but it was cold out. And shoes were a concern, this time of year. He decided he was entitled to a few hours of better transportation. Maurice would no more miss the car than he would the wallet, at least for a few hours. And if anyone was to blame, it was GM and their shoddy transmissions that practically begged for hotwiring. 

In fifteen seconds, the engine chugged to life, and Adam pulled the car away from the curb and started down Main. Maggie and Joel were still walking together in the street, only now off to one side, close enough that she could hold his hand if she wanted to. But wasn't. As he passed them, he saw Joel smiling at her - the same smile he'd worn last night. They'd have to surgically remove it, at this point. 

He'd read enough of Joel's letters to friends back east to piece it together. There was a thin line between bitter recluse and shy, lovesick kid, but Joel walked that tightrope every day. The image he presented to friends back east was of a man well-respected in his community - a town he portrayed as small but a welcome breath of fresh, rustic air. Cicely was not a "redneck hellhole" in his missives to the other Columbia grads, but "charming and offbeat", its citizens "warm and uncomplicated" instead of "unkempt mouthbreathers who'd never stray beyond this shithole town". Maggie was embellished not at all, apart from how close Joel presented their relationship to people who would never be able to verify the veracity of his stories. To them, she was just brilliant, beautiful, kind, challenging, and funny.

Not that he didn't get the same treatment in her correspondence. She'd told her own father they were dating. And others - family she didn't see often, friends who weren't really friends, hell, even Christmas cards had his name sprinkled throughout them, leaving wide open the implication that he was hers and vice versa, too. His name was almost always prefixed with "Doctor" because you could take the girl out of Grosse Pointe but...

Her diary was another story. Or was it a journal? He never quite understood the distinction, and Eve never kept one. Thank God, because it'd be 30 pages a day filled with signs that she was imminently about to shuffle off this mortal coil from the acute effects of a heretofore unheard-of disease, the rarer the better.

Maggie's personal reflections, on the other hand, revealed a woman conflicted. Angry, at first, for having developed feelings for Joel, and then confused. More current entries were preoccupied with an incident from last year where she believed they were about to make things official except she'd worried he hadn't wanted it as badly as she had and so she scrapped the whole thing. Maggie had to have the upper hand with men. Hence seeking out the beige-clad, personality bereft, hypochondriac lawyer. She didn't like him anywhere near as well as Joel, a point which last Saturday night's wine-soaked entry probed over 3 scribbled pages. Adam knew what this weekend's entry would be.

As Adam considered Mike, his derisory and absurd abode came into sight. He'd park Maurice's car there - his and Eve's cabin was an easy walk from the woods just beyond there, and he'd make his new license, claim a new identity, and call it a full day's work. Of course this meant chancing an encounter with the ailing counselor, which he'd rather avoid, all things being equal.

He'd researched Mike when the dome first went up. One must know amongst whom one dwells, after all. Mike's scattered former addresses, itinerant history, legal background, and highly questionable medical backstory screamed foreign espionage agent. Or assassin. Only at first, though. He was just a run of the mill sad sack lunatic, as it turned out. 

Speak of the devil... there he was in his garden. Maurice would have to wait on return of his vehicle; he might not notice its absence, and if he did, he always had Ed to serve as whipping boy when his things disappeared anyhow. 

Adam pulled the wire and cut the Cadillac's engine and let the car roll to a quiet stop. The last thing he could stomach was Mike's misplaced cheerfulness. His sunny disposition simply masked a bottomless melancholia that begged the question of why someone would go to this much trouble seeking despondency only to buoyantly avoid its effects. A sad need for attention and validation, most likely. Give him Joel any day - Joel, who stood in stark contrast - fully validated, a man who came to his misery naturally, organically. Deep down, Joel wanted joy but found himself forever mired in misery. Mike was simply the most recent source of it. This time, though, it was genuine and deep-dyed misery. 

Sure the good doctor whinged and moped about New York, but the city had faded into something mostly symbolic - kairotic, even - for Joel. Something he wanted to be defined by more and more badly the further enmeshed in Alaska he became. Whether he'd admit it or not (and he wouldn't), Maggie had become his raison d'etre. Hence her pretending Mike was hers. And hence Joel's current and unyielding misery. Something Adam found compelling. Sort of.

Okay, sure, call him a sap, a mawkish romantic, a Walter Mitty in a blue knit cap, but Adam felt a soft spot for Joel, Maggie, and their torrid and yet ennui-soaked entanglement. Perhaps it was some underdeveloped and puerile part of him at work - the same sort of thing that drove bored housewives to buy grocery store bodice-rippers. Perhaps it was simple boredom - between clandestine assignments and far flung restaurant openings, he might be accused of lacking in purposeful activity. Perhaps this interest was driven by the corrolaries between Joel and Maggie and he and his own inamorata. Eve, after all, was dichotomy personified. Sweet but sadistic. Benevolent but pitiless. Frigid and then debauched. Amaternal but loving and fecund. And rich, of course. Just like Maggie.

And Joel...well, he bore a certain resemblance to himself. Comfortable with a solitary lifestyle. Intelligent. Impatient. Perceptive. And somehow caught up on the single woman chosen by nature to give him the most irritation, the most vexation, and God knows the most pain. Along with the highest degree of fulfillment anyone on the planet could provide...

He shifted the Cadillac into park and its buoyant suspension swayed itself to a standstill. If he made quietly for the woods, he'd escape unseen. He leaned towards the passenger side and paused. Then again, this afternoon lacked vim and vigor, and the postal service couldn't always be trusted. A letter was set to arrive today, and Mike's mailbox was outside. And Adam had a bet to win, after all....


	10. The Absolution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mike's POV in Homesick

He'd always thought of himself as an amiable, friendly guy. Approachable. Relatable. Likeable. And yet, the town seemed to only really warm to him as soon as he announced he was leaving. They'd done a fundraiser and people were suddenly coming out of the woodwork with gifts and well wishes and everything else. He tried to think of it as fond farewell and not jubilence about his imminent departure. No, surely it was fondness. Yeah. People liked him. Right? People had been able to see past the dome and the space suit and the medicine and what looked, to the untrained eye, like simple agoraphobia. Well, Joel hadn't. But he was an anomaly, in the otherwise warm and understanding town. Wasn't he? And anyway it was complicated with Joel. And with Maggie. _Because_ of Maggie.

She'd taken an opposite trajectory from everyone else, starting out as just about the only one willing to try to get to know him and now being so angry with him that he hadn't seen her in days. He'd tried calling but... well, what to say?

The thing most people couldn't understand was how lonely this was. This aversion - no, this _allergy_ \- to the rest of the world. Then along came Maggie, sweet and determined to understand. She gave it her all to overcome her disbelief - almost like she had something to prove. If he'd spent more than the required semester in undergrad psychology, he'd might be able to write it off as a Florence Nightengale kind of thing. His path, however, had taken him through the much more cynical route of law school, so deep down, he knew she was using him to get to someone else.

Of course, Mike had been using her, too. Not like _that_ (although it had been awhile and he was duly appreciative), but in proving to himself the real world would accept him again. Proving he could have a normal life. Proving a woman could still find him attractive. Proving he'd reacclimate. And he did. So, too, would Maggie. With time. Surely she hadn't expected something long term. He was nothing more than a project to her. A charity case. A deflection. And revenge, of course. Hell, she'd been in love with someone else from the day she'd marched up to his dome and introduced herself. They spent half their time together talking about him, it seemed to Mike. How irritating he was to her, how ridiculous it was that he refused to adapt to life in Alaska, how jealous and petty he was of what she and Mike had. Failing all that time to realize that conversations like that meant Joel had a lot more of her than Mike ever would.

She knew what she was doing, so how could she have expected more? Her goal was to raise the hackles and the ire of the guy she didn't want to admit was her weakness. That, and prove to herself she wasn't the literal femme fatale she feared herself to be. She'd done both and cured Mike in the process. Her heartbreak would be short-lived. And probably had very little to do with Mike anyway.

That said, he had been cured. Whether it had been Maggie's coaxing, Joel's dedicated if disbelieving science, or his own psychoses outliving their usefulness, he was finally better. He'd decided now to reapply himself to curing something something bigger than the interior of his own head. If he'd beaten this, surely he had the power to save the rest of the world, one oil tanker at a time. There was nothing really substantive tying him down here, after all. And that letter from Greenpeace wrapped everything up with a bow, arriving just as the time he most wondered what should come next.

The rest of this little town reacted to his leaving with unabashed support and kindness - showering gifts and blessings down upon the local hero as he departed on his way to make good. Again, it should have felt kindly meant...but it felt a lot more like a firm shove out the door. Only Maurice gave it to him straight and explained it all. At his going away party, of all times, Mike got his answer.

"Counselor," came a stern if drawing voice behind him. "Can I tempt you with a scotch and some company?"

"Maurice!" He stood, to be sure the older man noted the intended genuflection. Maurice wasn't one to skimp on ceremony around. "I'd love your company. I'm not sure my system's quite ready to process hard liquor, of course -"

"It's twice distilled," Maurice said gruffly, shoving a glass into the younger man's outstretched hand without shaking it. "Put a little hair on that chest. You'll need it up in the Arctic Circle."

There was no use in arguing. Maurice had an iron grasp on this town and everyone in it. Mike sipped timidly at the brown liquid, stifling a wince as it burned his lips and tongue. Maurice tossed half of it back in one swig before leveling his eyes at him, a serious look on his always stern face.

"I'll level with ya, son. You did this town a service preventing Stevens' extradition. We've gotta hand it to you for that. But you upset an even bigger apple cart in your time here." The rest of the scotch disappeared from his glass in a single swallow. "I think we both understand what I'm getting at."

Mike didn't. "Well..." Maurice was a tough man to correct. He didn't take to it well, and Mike wondered if he ever believed any criticism to be valid. "I'm not completely sure if..."

"Fleischman," Maurice said in a quieter voice, tilting his glass at eye level and scanning its contents, as if he might have somehow missed a sip or two, hidden beneath the tumbler's ice cubes. He looked up at Mike as he sat the glass down with restrained gusto. "You interfered with not only my retention plan for our town physician but with that boy's affections as well. Unwilling though they are. And Miss O'Connell's."

"Maurice, I'm not sure if I-"

"And outside of saving myself the trouble of having to find another qualified doctor, I do have a vested personal interest in this matter as well. Call me a sop all you like, but I'm a bit partial to those two - my aviatrix and our local medico." Maurice motioned over his shoulder for another drink, trusting that his silent plea would register twenty feet away at the bar. "Oh, she may be sort of a tomboy, and a ballbuster to boot. And he's as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. But when they aren't at each other's throats, she's a credit to him. Just like he's a calming influence on her. She's a sweet gal. Deep down, of course I mean." He gave Mike a hard look. He felt compelled to apologize, despite being still unsure what they were discussing. Was he taking Maggie's side - angry with Mike for their breakup?

"Look, Maurice, I didn't ever mean to..."

"I have another, less cloying, more _monetary_ , interest in their bizarre courtship."

"...and I've been locked away in that dome for..."

"Twenty-one thousand dollars," came another, gentler, but still stern voice, from behind Mike this time. Holling appeared and put another stotch down on the table in front of Maurice, who nodded a thanks at its courier before drinking half of it. "Figured you were entitled to the number," Holling said before disappearing without a hello.

"Twenty-one thousand... Maurice, what are you two-"

"'Course with you out of the picture, they can get themselves back on track. Presuming you get yourself gone and out of town. And stay gone. As seems to be the plan. No offense meant, of course. We understand each other, son?"

The answer was supposed to be yes, regardless of whether Mike could come by saying it honestly. He pushed his luck instead. 

"Are you saying my...er, time with Maggie...cost you money? How?"

"Son, you're a bright one. What wasn't clear about what I said just now?"

"To be honest, Maurice, none of it was."

Maurice harumphed and shifted in his chair. "There was a bet. And you blew it for everyone. I make simple enough for ya this time?"

"People were _gambling_? On whether Maggie and I -"

"Maggie and _you_? How'd you ever pass the state bar exam with that kind of logic at your disposal? That girl's had eyes for no one but Joel since the day he arrived. 'Til you showed up and interfered. Cost everyone a lot of money in the process."

"There's a bet going around about Joel and _Maggie_ getting together?"

"They already got together. Only, because she was dating you when they did, they weren't liable to stay together. So everyone lost and the money rolled forward." Maybe he hadn't been the only one to recognize Maggie's hot and cold feelings. Still, though, to know the whole _town_ knew Maggie had done that with Joel first was a lot to swallow.

"Huh. Okay..." What was an appropriate response to that?? "Um...what's the bet now?"

"The day they get married."

Mike chuckled, feeling awkward. This situation was surreal. "Married, huh? Maggie O'Connell? And to Joel?"

"I'm not usually one to get absorbed in the minutae of other peoples' affairs, but it's been tough on the kid. You know he had a fiancee who left him when I moved him out here?"

"Who, Joel? I mean, okay, I think I'd heard that before... Maggie said something once maybe, but -"

"To say nothing of her. Five of her beaux - just -" Maurice made a noise like a sudden bout of choking. "Dead on her. One after the other. She took it well, 'course. Got a good heart, that one. But she deserves a little happiness, after that. Anyway, you get my point." Maurice stood and stretched before tossing the last of the scotch down his throat. "And setting aside all that maudlin interpersonal crap, the kitty's pretty large these days. So it's fortunate you've found your next calling. And domicile. Been a pleasure knowin' you. Just mind you get on that bus tomorrow." 

Maurice smacked the empty glass down on the table and ambled off towards the bar. Mike watched him go, feeling both threatened and lost at the same time. 

"Made a sizeable donation to your fund by the way," Maurice called over his shoulder as he took his stool at the end of the bar. "It'll go a long way towards a new wetsuit or thermal long johns or... your various and your sundry. I thought about givin' directly to your organization there but I'll be God damned before I give my hard earned money to a bunch of loons and dolphin-huggers..."

And with that, Maurice was clapping Ed hello on the back and embroiled in a new (but still largely one-sided) conversation. That had been yet another interaction that sure felt like, "You'll be missed - and take care to not let the door hit you on the way out." He sighed and pulled out his wallet.

"Put your money away, mister attorney-at-sea," came a friendly and perky voice. Shelly. "Dinner's on the house, courtesy of H and me. Save your coinage up for a waterproof flashlight or something, 'kay?"

"That's awfully nice of you, Shelly." She nodded as she picked up his plate. Shelly was kindness personified. And truthful to a fault. 

"Can I ask you something and have you give me an honest answer?"

"I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God," she said, standing straight and saluting for some reason. "I took the oath, now, so shoot."

"This'll sound kind of strange, but...do you know anything about Maggie? And Joel? And a bet?"

" _Ohhhhhh_ ," she said, sitting down quickly and leaning towards him conspiratorially. "Is that was you were doing this for? Aha!"

"I meant, about the -"

"I knew it!! Dead giveaway, back when she and Dr. F knocked boots in her barn. I mean, if the big H got squeezy with another girl, I'd be peeved and lookin' to pull hair and claw eyes with the best of 'em. You just shrugged it off. You knew the whole time she wanted the doc. And you were just tippin' the scales a little before you got in on the bet? Look, I'm gonna have to charge you double 'cause you've got inside info. It's only fair. But I'll let you pick your day. Here, wait, I'll get the calendar. Be right back."

Mike shook his head and forced down another small sip of Maurice's whiskey. He'd hardly registered, in his time here, but as a fixture in Joel and Maggie's ongoing drama. His departure would leave a quick ripple on the pond but not much more. 

Clem and his date rose from the table opposite Mike and headed for the door. Without them there, he saw Joel, leaning forward and scribbling notes on the desk in front of him. Leave it to Joel to bring work to a party. And not announce himself. Mike half-hoped to catch his eye and give him a smile. He'd won, after all, Joel. It hadn't even been a fair contest. They could spend the next twenty-four hours on a friendly footing.

"'Kay, so, all of June of '94 is full. Most of '95, too. Everyone thinks they'll get married in June just 'cause everyone gets married in June. July's popular, too, even with the mosquitos. Now, I can give you the first week of October," Shelly said, flipping through pages in a spiral-bound calendar, taking no care to moderate the volume of her voice. "Fall's pretty. Unless you want to hold out for a wintertime wedding. All of January's open, in '95. I need to get some brewskies back to table 9 pronto. Look, I'll leave you this and come right back. You get a week. Saturday to Friday, including both ends. Pick a good one."

"Shelly..." Mike said, but she'd flitted off already. He looked at the notebook in his hands and turned the pages slowly. A complicated matrix spanned tens of pages. Claims were staked throughout the book, and there had to be at least a hundred names in all on what seemed to be an index page. He paused with the notebook open in front of him in 1995 - September on the left page and October on the right. This couldn't get stranger if it tried.

"My unsolicited advice? Don't pick September. She'd never marry me on her birthday," came a familiar voice from next to him. Mike looked up to see Joel, a serious expression but with a smile playing at the corners of his lips and eyes. "I mean, she'd never marry me period, and I'd sooner be gored by a moose than to consider a life sentence shackled to that walking neurasthenia. But she'd never double-book an event. Particularly her birthday. Surely you've heard her rant about her brother and her having birthdays three days apart."

"No..." Mike smiled a little. "I didn't even know she had a brother."

Joel's smile finally spilled into one corner of his mouth but not beyond. "Well, be thankful for that. He committed the immutable sin of 'stealing' her birthday from her. How that is when he was born 5 years before her, I can't understand, but she's never forgiven him for it." Joel reached for the book and started turning pages. "You know, while you're at it, don't pick the week of Christmas, New Year's, July Fourth, or Easter, either. Or anything during a three day weekend, which is somehow 'tacky'. Groundhog Day offends her, too. As does Valentine's Day, but I assume you know that...huh, May's open still. May's good. She loves spring. All of the five minutes it lasts up here..."

"So you know about this? This bet?" 

"Maybe," Joel said, smiling a little more. "She doesn't, though. I suggest you keep it that way, too. Anyway, I'd better get home. Finish my letter to Ma. Thanks again for leaving me that respirator. And, you know... good luck. Good sailing, take care of yourself, all of that. So..." He turned and headed for the door. At that moment, Mike thought about the letter that just so happened to appear, just as things were getting serious between he and Maggie... 

"Hey, Joel?"

"Yeah?"

"You wouldn't happen to know anyone with Greenpeace, would you?"

"Me? No. Friend of mine from high school did a stint in the Peace Corps. Couple of guys from Columbia do Doctors Without Borders work in Costa Rica sometimes. Of course, all of them have a bigger stipend and more dignified setup than I do here... Why?" He had looked genuinely surprised by the question. Maybe the letter was simple kismet, after all.

"No reason. See you, Joel." Joel opened his hand in an understated goodbye and left.

"So did'ya pick your week yet?" Shelly was back, looking expectant and smiling. "You didn't tell Dr. F about this, did you?"

"No. He's none the wiser." Mike reached into his wallet and turned several pages forward in the book. "Hundred bucks, right?"


	11. The Quandary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nadine Fleischman's POV during Birds of a Feather

"...and I'm leaving you that recipe; remember to try it."

"What, Ma?" He hadn't been listening. He was reading, one foot tucked under him on his couch, his glasses perched on his nose and that same nose tucked into a medical journal. As a teen, it had been school textbooks - he'd skipped two entire grades, simply by reading ahead. When he was younger than that, it had been history books. At every age, it was something serious. Dr. Seuss hadn't lasted long in the Fleischman home.

"For the _chicken_. The one I made the other night," Nadine said, finally finished scrubbing Joel's kitchen to her satisfaction. She could tell he'd tried to clean before she came, bless his heart, but he simply wasn't equipped to do a good job. She'd babied him his whole life. She missed it and was trying now to make up for lost time - one last good clean before she and Herb went home tomorrow. She wasn't sure when she'd see him again. She'd begun to suspect it wouldn't be for quite a long time, and she had a plan to find out for sure.

She waved a piece of paper at him that she'd retrieved from her robe pocket. "I'll put it in that roaster I left for you."

 _And there it will sit, untouched, until the day I pack these things to come back to New York_ , she could almost hear Joel thinking to himself. If he'd even heard her. Fine. Gentle, motherly shaming was the next trick up her sleeve. 

"I counted no fewer than _nine_ tv dinners in your freezer, honey."

"Ma, no one has called them tv dinners in twenty years..." So he _was_ listening - just being choosy about his responses.

"Whatever they are, I raised you on better food than you're eating. And you're a _doctor_. You should know better." Guilt was always a useful conversational tool as well. "All that salt and who knows what else."

"My systolic's consistently 109, with diastolic 71. I appreciate your sudden interest in my sodium intake, but my cardiovascular system is doing just fine."

"At least _try_ making the chicken. Once. You'll see; it's easy, and it'll freeze well so you'll have leftovers..." He'd gone back to reading. Nothing. Time for a new approach. "...or, you know...it does make enough for _two_...." She trailed off after emphasizing that last word, watching him for a reaction. His posture stiffened ever so slightly.

He wasn't about to respond, of course. Not to _that_. Which just made her all the more determined to get an answer. Her usual tricks weren't working. She had one more. That nice girl in Joel's office, Marilyn, had taught her something out here. Or maybe nature itself had taught her, and Marilyn had just given her the words she needed to understand it. _If you stop talking, you'll hear him_...

As for Joel, he'd heard Nadine, all right. Heard her _and_ gotten her meaning. He was trying hard now to pretend he hadn't, lips pursed and gaze focused hard on the page before him. 

Normally, silence like this drove her to chatter. Herb was stoic and often silent. She joked with friends that she usually said more in a day than he'd said in their entire marriage - and they'd been married thirty-four years and counting. His recalcitrant demeanor matched well with her chattiness. She was able to draw him out, keep him engaged. Her nervousness, on the flip side, appreciated his quiet calm. They'd years ago found a balance, and it worked well. Joel was an odd mix of both of them, the way children so often are. His penchant for silence wasn't as developed as his father's, but he also had far more patience than his mother for it. He could usually outwait her in any pause. And was clever enough to have realized young that when he wasn't talking, his mother wasn't getting any information from him. He was far more private than either of his parents.

This conversation would be different, though. He wasn't outwaiting her this time. Not with her newfound calm and certainly not with as badly as she wanted to know _this_. Nadine had her suspicions, her clues. She needed only to confirm them. And she was bound and determined to hear Joel say it. Tonight.

He shifted in his chair and turned the page in his journal, flicking it irritatedly. He didn't, however, look up. It was working....

Nadine settled into a living room chair with an open book and waited. Another flick of a page from him punctuated the silence. And then another. Finally, Joel sighed loudly and put his journal down with a great flourish on the coffee table between them. She could feel him looking at her, but she stayed silent, placidly staring at the words on the page before her, not really reading them. Another thirty seconds went by, which was far too much silence for him to bear.

"Okay, Ma, I'll bite. What is that supposed to mean?"

"What's that, honey?" She didn't look up and turned the page with exaggerated casualness.

"Your little 'it makes enough for two' bit of passive-aggressive mothering just now, that's what. You wanna know about her - fine, ask away, Ma. I don't know much more than you do, but since you're dying to talk about her, let's just do it now. I don't want to stay up half the night while you furtively-but-not-really-furtively wind your way around to asking me about her." He tossed his discarded reading glasses on top of his periodical, sat up, and squared his body towards Nadine, with both feet on the floor, as if trying to convey having the upper hand. "So ask."

Nadine slowly put a bookmark against the page she hadn't been reading, closed the book, and placed it onto her side of the coffee table. She looked at Joel's face finally and stifled a smile. She didn't know if all mothers experienced this phenomenon or if it was unique to her, but she often saw through time, looking at her son. Just now, he looked every bit like himself at thirteen - righteously indignant and yet uncertain, too. Right on that edge between teenager and little boy - looking more like the latter, wanting to be in control but not entirely sure how to make it so.

"I mean, I know what you _suspect_ ," he continued, in the absence of her response. "And I guess I know why you suspect it, too. Maybe. Or else Marilyn said something to you. 'Cause I know _she_ has her suspicions. But there's nothing going on. At least that _I_ know about. So." He paused, hoping that would be the end of the discussion. As if what he'd said even came close to covering the topic or satisfying her interest in it.

More time passed and she considered this cabin. It was cozy. Rustic, but cozy. With quite a bit of space. Entirely different from the two bedroom walk up apartment he'd grown up in. Their back window faced the back of another building. Here, the porch overlooked a beautiful lake, with a mountain looming in gray behind it. You could see it all from his kitchen window. She could get very used to visiting him here.

"Okay, yes, we spend a lot of time together," he continued, the silence still too much to endure. "But it's not by choice. Not all of it, at least. The state owns my time, and she flies. It's necessity. Not recreation. Particularly with how she flies." His eyes were nervous, as if already convinced she didn't believe a word he was saying. About which he was right. "And while I appreciate your little attempt at matchmaking-by-way-of-Julia-Child, she and I aren't going to happen. Chicken or no chicken." He nodded his head slightly, as if to emphasize the period at the end of that sentence. He'd done that in high school debate - a flourished announcement that he was now entirely out of arguments and ready to be handed victory.

"Joel, honey, what ever are you talking about?"

"What am I talking about? _What_?" He repeated the word sarcastically. "O'Connell. Maggie. The pilot. You know, the one who flew you here from Anchorage? Her."

"Oh, her? What about her?"

Joel looked exasperated. "You were the one angling for this conversational path, hoping I'd slip up and talk about us; you tell me!"

"I just wanted to make sure you knew where that recipe was..." Nadine stifled another smile. " _Us_? You mean you and _Maggie_? Ohhhh... Well, how _nice_. I like her, Joel. Quite a bit."

"No!" He looked flustered. "Not me and Maggie. Maggie and I, I mean. Whichever. Because it's _neither_. Ma, come on. Ever since Elaine and I broke up, you've been hoping I've been hiding a full-fledged relationship from you out here and that any woman under the age of forty might secretly be her. And Maggie's about it in this town. Not that we... 'cause we _aren't_... and now, based on nothing, you're making accusations and you've just _assumed_..."

"Joel. _You_ 've assumed I didn't talk to Maggie already." Nadine let her smile show a little, to let him know she had him. Not because of what Maggie said, of course, which was nothing beyond that everyone in town thought Joel was a great doctor. That she'd blushed saying it, and added no commentary of her own spoke volumes.

Joel's face suddenly flushed a subtle pink, too. Mmm-hmmm. "Oh _God_... what did she say to you?" Younger and younger, he looked as he flailed for control of the conversation. 

"If nothing's going on, why are you so worried? What can there be to tell?"

The subtle pink darkened to an unmistakable blush. "Nothing. There's nothing. _Mostly_ nothing, I mean." He'd hedged so quickly, she knew he was on the border of lying. And that she was absolutely right. "She's a meddler, Ma. A pot stirrer. She enjoys messing with my life, and my mother's a golden opportunity, in her twisted mind. So I'm just worried about what she might have said. I could see her fictionalizing something and..." He paused and looked like he was trying to collect his thoughts. " _When_ did you talk to her? Just in the plane? You and Pop?"

"We talked that whole flight. She was such a wonderful tour guide up there." Nadine paused for dramatic effect, before casually adding, "And we had nice little lunch together today, she and I." Joel blanched a little. "You'd already eaten with your father, and she was the only person I recognized in that pub or restaurant or whatever you call it here."

"The Brick," he mumbled, looking worried.

"Right. Such and odd name for a restaurant; I wonder what the history behind that is..."

Nadine let this pause overtake the room and watched Joel. His body was still but his mind was quite clearly squirming uncomfortably. Ten seconds went by. Any moment now...

"So what'd she say?" There it was. Right on schedule.

"Who?"

" _Maggie_ ," he said, failing to sound at all patient. "What did you talk about at lunch? Me?"

"Oh this and that. Where she'd gone to school. How she'd come to live here. How she'd gotten interested in flying. Her dad's the CEO of...oh, which one was it that she said? One of the big car companies, anyway. Or was a few years back... Must be quite well off. She's from Grosse Pointe, she said, near Detroit. Very wealthy area..."

"Uh huh." He was frowning, thinking. 

Nadine paused again, longer this time. The poor thing looked truly terrified at what she might say next. Which made it the perfect time for...

"Which, of course, you know, since you went all the way to Detroit this spring to spend a weekend with a meddler you don't like all that much. And her family. A journey you've never mentioned to me. Of course you've always been such a sweet, _honest_ boy, so I'm sure it just slipped your mind...."

A full minute went by before she knew she'd broken him. "Ma..." he started, shaking his head and smiling a little. "And I thought you were being passive-aggressive before..." He'd regressed so far he looked like a ten year old boy again - nervous, earnest, sweet...but a little bit sad. "Look. You win, okay? That's not what me going home with her was, but I admit it... I've got...I don't know what to call it...a _thing_ for her, I guess... _Something_ , I don't know what."

"Don't you?"

"I really don't. It doesn't matter, anyway; it won't work. She and I. We're mirror opposites of each other. And she never wants to leave this place. Me, I'm counting the days until I rejoin civilization. She's not Jewish. She's...I don't know what, actually, but she's definitely not Jewish. I relish my privacy, and she's nosy as hell. Bossy. Hot-tempered. Thinks I'm an idiot because I don't have a rudimentary grasp of plumbing. Nevermind that I graduated from one of the best medical schools in the world. About which she could not be less impressed. And she's just so... I mean, she likes _camping_ , Ma, of all things. And hunting and cold weather and dogs and airplanes and melodramatic Edith Wharton novels and...and a list of about a hundred other things I can't stand."

"So what's the problem then? You don't like her - why does it matter whether you get along?"

Joel's gaze dropped to his lap. "I, uh...I didn't say I didn't like her." His voice was quiet, and he dusted off an invisible speck of lint from his pant leg. "Kind of the opposite problem, actually..."

 _And when you hear the wind, you'll fly_...

\----

"He's in love with her," came a quiet drawl from behind Nadine. She was watching Maggie walk towards the restroom in the Brick the morning before her conversation with Joel. They'd had a very revealing lunch together, at least on Nadine's end. And by design. She'd seen Maggie dining alone and seized the opportunity. Maggie had told her about their trip to Detroit, but only accidentally. She was otherwise careful to keep whatever she felt for Joel under wraps, just like Joel had done this whole trip. She could tell, though - a twinkle in the girl's pretty green eyes when Nadine would tell stories about her son. A quirk of her expressive eyebrows. Joel was a favorite topic of hers.

Nadine turned to see a sandy-haired older man, standing beside her. He had a kind face, a plaid shirt and a bar apron on, and she recognized him as the man who'd waved to her as she entered. The one she'd seen kiss a much younger - and heavily pregnant girl. Not that she should judge, but...

"'Case you've been wonderin'. Your boy, I mean. With Maggie," he said, before sitting down in Maggie's temporarily vacant chair. "Holling Vincouer, ma'am. Glad to finally meet you. I wanted to tell you, Joel's been a real boon to this town. Seen him several times myself. He's gonna deliver my own child here soon. He's done you very proud."

She'd had a dozen such conversations since she'd arrived, all of them sincere like this man's. She and Herb had been greeted like minor celebrities all week - "Oh, you're _Doctor Fleischman's_ 's parents. How great to meet you!" The local radio deejay had even had asked what their favorite songs and writers and poets were and crafted a few segments tailored to them in the week they'd been there. For as much as Joel complained about this town, he was well-loved here. It made Nadine happy.

"Don't know what we'd do without him, frankly," Holling continued after looking briefly in the direction of the restrooms. "Particularly her. Excuse my intrusion. I can't claim to be a father quite yet myself, but I presume that, coming all this way as you've done, you wanted to know about your son's life here. And I doubt he'll tell you about her himself." The older man smiled. "He may not know. Or, more likely, he knows, but he doesn't like what it means."

"He's not coming back to New York," Nadine said slowly, realizing as she said it that she'd known it since she arrived here. "Is he?"

"I reckon he'll claim he's just delaying his return. He'll never say never, not to New York. But his heart's here. I just hope he realizes it before that contract of his is up. And stops fightin' it. Fightin' _her_. Even if that's what they do best."

"And she feels the same way about him?" Elaine had been a surprise - and had broken his heart. She couldn't bear seeing it happen twice.

Holling chuckled. "Right on down to the not realizin'. And certainly on the not wantin' to. He ever mention her to you?"

"Not one word. And he's talked nonstop since the day he learned how. Which is why I'd be willing to bet quite a bit of money that you're right," Nadine said, smiling.

"Coincidentally, ma'am, and since you phrased it that way," Holling leaned forward conspiratorially. "If gambling's your bent, I might have just the chance of a lifetime for ya..."


	12. The Inscrutable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris' POV, during Fish Story

Chris was rarely tongue-tied, and in the moments he found himself so, he was usually able to lean on old friends. Kierkegaard. Whitman. Nietzsche. And with all due respect to those cats, none were stuck sticking their noses into Maggie O'Connell and Joel Fleischman's extremely thorny and private relationship. He'd sure drawn the proverbial short stick on this one.

He and Ed had left Joel at the lakeside Wednesday morning to go back to town for supplies and reinforcements for him to use while he battled the big one he'd hooked. Joel almost never fished. Three times, maybe, in his five years there. And just like that, today he'd caught something. 

"He's real lucky," Ed noted as they shuffled along, almost reading Chris' mind. "Hooked a big guy even though he's not very great at this. Well. I mean," Ed hesitated; he was never one to say anything negative on purpose and usually quick to fix it if he did by saying something kind. "Not to say he's bad. He's just better at other stuff. Like being a doctor. And the crossword puzzle. And he's _getting_ better at fishing, is what I mean. Especially today. He seemed to really cheer up after he felt that bite, too."

"Yeah," Chris added, wondering if he should ask Ed what was on his mind. "Seems like some kind of bad karma hanging over him." The truth was, Chris was a little worried about Joel - specifically about he and Maggie. Yes, they fought, but normally it was both of them fighting - and enjoying it. The whole town was usually privy to how they felt and what they were mad about. This, though, this was weird - Joel quietly and irritatedly complaining to he and Ed about women. Which obviously meant Maggie. Chris hadn't been able to tell what Joel was upset about. Ed, though...

"Oh, 'cause of Maggie, you mean? Yeah. The Passover thing."

He knew Ed would know. He and Joel had that same intuitive healer's vibe. Ed went on to say that Maggie wanted to hold a dinner for Passover - do the whole dogmatic spread - just for Joel, and he didn't want her to. Really _really_ didn't want her to. So she was mad and he was mad and they were mad. Kumbayah. 

They brought Joel some provisions and went home for the night. The next thing everyone knew, Joel had gone AWOL from the dock, so the problem of Maggie being nicer than Joel seemed to want her to be wasn't as important as him possibly shuffling off the mortal coil altogether. When Chris got a call from Maggie yesterday, asking him to come to a seder Saturday night, he said yes but hung up worried.

"I thought he didn't want her to do this," he said to Ed over breakfast at the Brick that Saturday morning.

"Oh the dinner? Yeah. He didn't." Ed paused to have spoonful of cereal. "He's like that about Jewish holidays. 'Specially when she wants to help. 'Specially now that they're..." Ed paused, trying to think up the right word to describe Maggie and Joel's current entanglement. He ended up abandoning the sentence for more cereal.

"Does she know that?"

Ed shrugged, still chewing.

"So shouldn't we remind her? _Before_ tonight?"

"Well..." Ed started slowly after a moment's pause, holding up his left hand and looking at it. "On the one hand, I don't want to go behind Dr. Fleischman's back. On the other hand," he said, holding out his right and shifting his eyes to it, "I really don't want them to break up over this. But back on that first hand again," he said, his eyes moving back to it. "I really, really don't want to tell Maggie what to do."

Holling smiled behind the bar, apparently overhearing their conversation.

"Okay, what do you think, Holling?"

"This dinner? I reckon it's a nice gesture on her part. A sweet thing to do, goin' to all that trouble, puttin' a whole event like that together for him."

"But _should_ she be? If Joel doesn't want it -"

"- he'll tell her," Holling finished for him. "They're hardly shy with one another, Chris. They'll leave your ears ringing sometimes with their candor. Especially as it regards one another."

"Except he _did_ tell her," Chris protested. "And she's doing it anyway."

"Then _you_ talk to her," Holling said, a wry look in his eyes.

And that was the story of how Chris had come to abandon his usual Saturday afternoon programming, put a Cole Porter LP on the air, leave the mic, and take a walk to Maggie's just after lunch. She was probably about to start cooking, and if he caught her, she'd still have time to call the whole thing off.

The fish had been a sign, Chris thought to himself, weaving his was through Cicely towards Maggie's house. Joel's fish. Like in Melville. Another old literary friend with whom Chris would gladly change places at the moment.

Herman's fixation was fate, of course - man's struggle to understand his destiny, accept he didn't control it, all that jazz. Maybe it was poetic, then, Joel clinging tight to his fish this week, angry at Maggie. Joel was a determinist, through and through. And Joel believed his destiny was waiting for him in New York. Nietzsche was his kindred spirit - _no one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone_. And that bridge was the Brooklyn Bridge for Joel - until Maggie showed up.

Maggie, on the other hand, was the strongest adherent to free will that Chris could think of, this side of Plato. _The mind is everything_ , Plato'd said; _what you think, you become_. That was Maggie, through and through. From debutante beauty queen to dressed-down aviatrix. No man alive could convince her that she didn't have the power to change the course that life had put her on. Least of all Joel.

Joel, of course, was having a hard time reconciling what he thought he was headed for with what destiny kept implying it had in store for him. As usual, he and Maggie were both a little bit right - just too stubborn to see it. Nietzsche'd do some metaphorical skull cracking with those two - _Free will without fate is no more conceivable than spirit without matter, good without evil_. Or Maggie without Joel. Friedrich never met the two of 'em, but even he realized that one couldn't exist without the other, no matter how oppositional they were. Fate and free will existed in equal measure in everyone, even Maggie and Joel. Fitting, then, that Joel'd spent this week wrestling his own white whale, reconciling destiny and resolve, trying to deny that what he really wanted to choose was his new fate.

The thought of Joel's fish brought Chris back to Melville. Now, there was a guy who seemed to take Maggie's side. What had Elijah said to Ishmael in the beginning? _What's signed is signed and what's to be will be_... Maybe the sailors should have listened to that guy. Maybe Chris should have, too, instead of trudging along Main, questioning free will and whether he could change the inevitable between Joel and Maggie.

Joel was always going to get tangled up with Maggie, from the moment he set foot in Cicely. She was something else; it was hard _not_ to fall for her. Chris himself had had a brief and passing thing for her, right when he'd moved to town. They were the new kids, the two of them, close in age, and she was friendly. Nice. And beautiful. They flirted a little back then, but it wasn't ever anything serious, which was for the best. Chris didn't like the whole tied-down thing, monogamy. Maggie liked to think of herself as a free spirit, too, but really only dug chaos when she controlled it. She was also a romantic at heart - and a traditionalist. Definitions mattered to her - and commitment, too. And, despite her projected persona, she loved creature comforts as much as Chris loved avoiding them. They were better as friends, and he was glad they'd never screwed things up by thinking otherwise. 

She and Joel, though... talk about screwing up. Only their problem was trying to force themselves to ignore reality all those years. Now that they'd given in, he hated to see them screw it all up again. So here he was, out front of her house, suddenly remembering just how private Maggie was about Joel. And just how poorly she dealt with criticism...

Chris took a deep breath and started up her front steps, stumbling when the first one wobbled under his foot. He'd have tell her about that, although surely she'd have noticed by now. He caught himself on the railing and looked up at her front door, noticing the screen was closed but the interior door open. She'd seized this unseasonably warm day in March. Well, warm by Alaskan standards - it was 53 when he'd left the station, the sun still at its wintertime apex overhead. You learned to _carpe_ all the _diem_ you could up here.

How to open this conversation, he wondered. Point out to Maggie that she didn't know Joel as well as she thought she did and that pushing this Passover thing on him wasn't what he wanted from her? That was going to go over well. But if he dawdled much longer, though, it'd be too late to call it off.

He exhaled slowly and raised his hand to knock, only to finally notice her through the screen. She was standing at the island in her kitchen, scissors in hand.

"Okay, tell me what I do now," she said. And wasn't alone, it seemed.

Joel appeared beside her. "You can't manage _parsley_ , O'Connell? I thought you could cook."

"These are two hundred dollar kitchen shears, Fleischman. They're sharp as a carving knife. They claim they can cut through flesh. Bone. Don't tempt me to test that." She waved them in a mock-menacing way between them at eye level before bringing them back down to her cutting board. "And tell me what I do with this."

"Well, it's very complicated," he said, moving closer to her to peer over her shoulder. His voice was sarcastic - it was Joel, after all - but soft and almost playful in a way Chris had never heard him be. "You cut little sprigs from the parsley and then put them in a pile. I can go over it more slowly if you got lost in all the detail there..."

She elbowed him, and he mostly dodged it but got knocked off balance enough to reach past her for the countertop to steady himself. She smiled and persisted with questioning. "Washed? Not washed?"

He drew his hands back from the countertop and put them to her waist. "Your call."

Chris knew he should announce himself but was trying to get a read on whether he'd shown up in the middle of the very fight he'd been trying to head off. Granted, they sounded a lot more flirtatious than contentious, but, then again, it was _them_.

"People have to eat these, right? The...the...uh..." She leaned forward and pulled closer an open book on her countertop, squinting at it and flipping a page.

"They can. They're more a vehicle for transporting the salt water, though." 

"Then we wash it first, if people might put it in their mouths," she said, with a hint of patronizing, as she straightened back up against him between his arms. "That sounds like a good job for you. Something you can't burn or overseason. Go clean the, uh, the _karpas_." She said the last word triumphantly, clearly pleased she'd found it in the book.

He chuckled. "What, you think you speak Hebrew now, too?"

"I'm just trying to use the right wor-" He leaned down and kissed the side of her neck. This... was not what Chris has expected to see...

"Fleischman, I'm trying to cook..." That was also a tone of voice he'd never heard before. It sure didn't seem like they were fighting...

"You're _cutting_ , not cooking," he mumbled against her neck, still kissing her, arms moving to encircle her more. Maggie's eyes closed and the hand holding the scissors lowered to her countertop. "And we've probably earned a break, don't you think?"

"Fleischman, we are ten minutes into working on this meal together," she said shrugging forward out of his arms, still smiling. She picked up the bunch of parsley on her cutting board. "And while it's true I still know very little about this, I'm fairly sure you're not supposed to be preoccupied with sex on Passover." She turned to face him and held up the green bundle between them. "Go wash."

"Now you're telling me how to be Jewish? That didn't take long." He grinned and took the parsley from her hands and turned towards the sink.

"What should I do next?" Maggie's eyes were still trained on the book on her countertop.

"You can grate the horseradish. If your eyes can take it. It's all ready. And I washed it already, since you think I'm incompetent."

"I don't just _think_ that..." She smiled to herself and started grating something into a bowl while he turned on the water.

"And sex is absolutely compatible with Passover, O'Connell," came his voice from behind her as he washed at the sink. "Encouraged, even. It's a celebration of escaping bondage. I know it's the first thing I'd want to do if I'd been in prison. And anyway, it's a mitzvah. Sex is. A good thing. Dogmatically, I mean."

" _Sure_ it is," she said, still smiling, as he returned, with the parsley wrapped in a paper towel. "Hey, really - am I doing this right?"

"Perfectly." He put the parsley down on the island beside the horseradish on her cutting board and turned her towards him, taking her hands. "Thanks for doing this, O'Connell. Really."

"Yeah, yeah," Maggie said, trying to sound disaffected by Joel's sincerity. "You said that earlier."

"I mean it." He leaned forward and kissed her against her kitchen island. Chris felt uncomfortably voyeuristic and yet unable to look away. This was a whole different side to the good doctor than Chris had ever seen. And to Maggie.

"Flesichman." Maggie pulled back from his lips after several long moments, trying to sound chiding. "I think the book is much more help than you are right now, and it seems able to keep its hands to itself. So I have a new job for you. Go down to the Brick and get some wine for tonight. Can you handle that?"

"Maybe," he said, smiling. "What kind?"

"How would _I_ know? And why don't you? Nevermind. I'll check in the book." She said, turning in his arms and reaching for the book on her counter. "I'm sure there's something in here somewhere about..."

Joel put his hand on hers, stilling her movements. "I promise you, Holling does not have Manischeviz in his inventory. Nor do I want to drink that tonight. Or on any night. It tastes like cough syrup. I just meant should I get red or white?"

"But, wait, don't we have to get something..." She was looking sideways, straining to see the book.

"O'Connell," he tipped her chin gently back to face him. "You've seen me eat oysters. I fudge the details on some of this stuff sometimes, so we're not bound by that book next to you. Or I'm not at least. It's a guide not a scorecard."

"I just want to do this right."

"You're doing great." He kissed her once more quickly, picked his wallet up from her countertop, and walked towards the door. Chris ducked back out of sight on the porch and contemplated his exit. "I'll get a couple bottles of each, okay?"

"I can trust you to handle doing that, right? You're not going to get lost or freak out if you see a wild animal like a moose? Bear? Stray kitten? You can bring that whistle of mine with you for protection if you want..."

"Very funny," Joel retorted. 

Chris saw the door open, but Joel didn't emerge. It closed again as if he had turned back. Chris might manage an escape after all. He made his way to the stairs. 

"Hey. O'Connell?" Joel's voice made Chris start a little and check behind him. Joel was at the door but facing back towards the kitchen. His voice had been timid, un Joel-like. Chris scrambled quietly down the porch steps but heard Joel say, "That thing I said earlier? The _other_ thing I said? I meant that, too."

"So did I," came the response to a question Chris never heard Joel ask but could pretty easily guess. Well, _that_ was intriguing and fairly hard to mistake, given the context. Maybe instead of everything being wrong between them, things had suddenly and finally turned towards right. "Now get out of here. You're in my way."

"Okay. See ya."

Chris quickly made his way across Maggie's front lawn and harriedly vaulted her low front fence, landing unsteadily on the sidewalk, feeling very juvenile but thankful for his long legs. He turned around to see Joel emerge from Maggie's front door and start trotting down her front steps with a besotted grin on his face. He finally registered Chris' presence and looked confused and then pleased, if a little guarded. His usual posture.

"Chris? Hey. What're you doing?"

"Uh... just...headin' back downtown," Chris said, scrambling for an answer as Joel joined him. They started walking together in the direction of downtown. "Show's on autopilot for another twenty five, but I've got to get back to the station. Reading the a chapter of On the Road today. Got a little of the ol' wanderlust myself and went for a walk."

"I never liked Kerouac." Joel was entirely back to his usual cantankerous self again. "Seemed like just an endless stream-of-consciousness. An _uninteresting_ stream, at that." 

Trying to forget the surprising scene he'd just seen play itself out in Maggie's kitchen, Chris wound slowly across Cicely, debating beat authors with Joel. As that conversation ran out of gas, Chris realized he'd never asked Joel who his favorite author was.

"As a body of work? Easy. Dickens." Chris stifled an eye roll - an all-too-predictable choice by Joel. Great stuff and well-written, no doubt, but too obvious a choice. Wordy, over-ironied, and hardly boundary-pushing - a bit like Joel himself. "But my favorite single book? Moby Dick. No question."

His choice was a little too coincidental, as if Joel had somehow uncovered Chris' morning thoughts. And that he'd been snooping around at Maggie's. "Really? I didn't peg you as a Melville guy."

"It's the perfect novel," Joel said decisively. "Nature versus man. The line between faith and madness. Fate versus free will. Everything. It's great."

"Let me guess - you're a fate guy, huh?"

" _Me_?" Joel looked surprised and then genuinely amused, chuckling a little and shaking his head. "What, are you joking? Hardly. I'd like to think I'm in control of my own destiny, thank you very much."

"Really? _You_?"

Joel gave Chris an incredulous sidelong glance. "Absolutely. And since we are apparently lacking in lighter conversation than deterministic philosophy for this little walk of ours here, yes, really." He laughed to himself again. He was in a really good mood - well, for Joel, at least. No trace of his cloudy sullenness from that day fishing remained. Which made sense if what Joel had said at the door meant what Chris thought it had. 

"There's no such thing as fate," Joel continued, sounding much less soft and much more cocky than what Chris had observed before at Maggie's. "I mean, life is what you make of it. If it wasn't, I'd have had a hell of an easier time becoming a doctor than I did. And I damn sure wouldn't be standing here, if there was such a thing as fate." After a moment, he added, "Nothing personal, of course," sounding dutifully apologetic. "Why, do you believe in fate?"

"I don't know," Chris said, realizing he'd spent a lot of time reading others' thoughts on the topic but hadn't considered his own in awhile. "Depends on the day, I guess. How friendly karma's been lately. What about Maggie, though?" That was a blunder. Sure, Chris wanted to know, but he'd hit the topic a little too suddenly and hard. Joel'd see through it, too, and play it close to the vest.

"O'Connell?" Even saying her name made Joel smile. "Now, _there_ 's someone who believes blindly in fate." They had turned together onto Main Street and were headed across it towards the Brick.

"But you don't?"

"Depend on it - if she's for it, it's probably because I'm against it," Joel said, smiling. "Doesn't even matter what 'it' is. She's the consummate contrarian."

"I meant, though, what _about_ her? If you'd had your hand perched on the steering wheel of destiny, yeah, you wouldn't have come here. But then you'd have missed meeting her." Joel showed no reaction. Chris pushed his luck on the topic. "Kinda seems like a good thing that you did, though... Or, isn't it? Hard to tell with you guys, sometimes..." He looked at Joel out of the corner of his eye and saw him smiling still but quiet. Might as well go for broke. "How _are_ things with you two lately?"

They walked quietly to the Brick's front door. Joel paused at the bottom of the stairs and looked at Chris wryly. "Nice try," Joel said, opening the door for Chris to pass through and followed him through it. "But I thought we were talking about Melville..." Chris drifted towards the bar with Joel behind him.

"Need a couple bottles of wine," Joel said, seeing Holling. "Half red, half white. Good stuff, if you've got it."

"How many?"

"I don't know. How many does O'Connell usually get for one of those dinner parties of hers?"

"I find one bottle per three people's a good rule, personally."

"Yeah, but is it _her_ rule? I'm the one who's gotta take this back there and bear the brunt of her displeasure if it's wrong."

"I'll get you a half bottle per person, then. To be safe."

"3 of each then," Joel called to Holling as he headed for the storeroom. "Thanks."

Clearly, whatever problem had been there between Joel and Maggie was gone. Even more clear was that Maggie was something Joel felt more secretive about than usual. Chris tried to consider the best route to go.

"I hated that book the first time I read it," Joel said, suddenly reentering their earlier conversation. "Ninth grade English."

"We read it in tenth grade," Chris offered up, cautiously, trying to buy back Joel's trust through shared experience. There was almost no way to steer this conversation back to Joel and Maggie that he could find. Hell, he'd gotten what he set out to - the two of them were happy again. Might as well let it ride. "What do you mean you hated it, though? Thought you said it was your favorite book?"

"It is. But when I first read it," he groaned and made a face. "There's what feels like hundreds of pages describing the whaling industry. And sailing terminology. Couldn't keep my eyes open through half of it. Made my way through an the essay test by droning on and on about free will and the whale being a symbol for God and whatever else, and managed to fake enough comprehension for a B-plus."

"I thought the whale symbolized death and the evil that exists in nature."

"Well, whatever it's supposed to be, I got my grade and vowed to never touch it again. Of course, I got handed it again in sophomore English. College. Got more out of it at nineteen than at fourteen, at least." Joel reached for his wallet, craning his neck in the direction Holling disappeared to. He hadn't reemerged yet, but Joel was always a little impatient. "Not _much_ more, but I liked it a lot better that time. Read it again in med school, too. Second year. It wasn't assigned, I just saw on my shelf one night and sat down with it. Maybe it was the draw of reading for pleasure - reading fiction - amidst all the chemistry and anatomy books. That time, it really stuck with me. I found myself reading it every year or so since. I realized I fell in love with it somewhere along the way, without really meaning to or noticing I had."

Holling reappeared. "Put 'em together in a box for ya, Joel. That's a lot of weight to carry such a long way back - you sure you don't need to borrow my hand truck? It's no trouble to get it for you. Bring it back at your leisure..."

"Nah, I'm fine. Her house is only 5 minutes away. Here you go," he said, handing Holling a folded pile of bills. "Thanks again. See you tonight." Joel sized up the box on top of the bar, considering how best to lift it before hoisting it into his arms and leaving.

"Hey, Joel, man..." Chris started in, and Joel turned back. 

"I know you're trying to ask me about her. I also know she doesn't want anyone to know about this in any great detail. So between that and the fact that I know about the little bet the town’s got running -"

"You _know_?"

"- and I refuse to give anyone an unfair advantage. So I've said all I'm going to at this point. I gave you a pretty big hint just now, too. The book's an allegory."

"Right, for nature and God and..."

"No, _I_ used it as an allegory just now. For O'Connell. There's your hint. I'll see you at her place. Seven o'clock."

Holling returned and watched Joel go. "He seemed cheerful. And that dinner party is still on, seems like."

"Yeah... Hey, Holling? Grab the book, will ya? I think I need to update my bet..."


	13. The Obtrusion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jed Fleming's POV, during Blood Ties

It was cold in Alaska. Despite it being May, which was almost summertime, even in Northern climates like Michigan, it was chilly. And that cold air wasn't helping breathing be any easier at the moment. Not that he was about to ask for help, even gasping for air as he was.

"Look. You've gotta take some slow, deep breaths..." came an irritated voice from nearby. "Your body needs to oxygenate the... the...damn it, ouch...the arachidonic acids so that...jeez, ow...so...so your body can make the, uh... shit what are they called? The eico _sanoids_. To counteract the inflammatory process taking over your diaphragm right now. Just breathe deeply and it'll subside...ow...in about another minute or two."

"Yeah? Why the hell should I listen to -" The rest of his sentence had been cut off by another round of knife-like pain across his belly and a strangled gasp. For a little guy, he sure got him where it hurt. "To you?"

"Because, between the two of us, I know where the goddamned diaphragm is." Joel had rolled over and was now kneeling beside Jed, putting his hands on him, albeit more gently than last time. "Right here is what hurts, right?"

"Get your hands off of me, you little -"

"I can feel it spasming," he said, running his hands across him, Joel's eyes watching his fingers. One eye was squinted almost closed, and Joel was still wincing from that shot to his face. Good. "Calm down. Breathe with me, okay? In...out. Again, in...out."

"This isn't a Lamaze class, for chrissakes, Fleischman. And get off of me."

"The faster you shut up, the faster you'll feel better," Joel snapped back. "Now breathe."

Jed did as he was told, glaring at the dark haired man kneeling beside him. A cheap shot, that had been - Joel's sucker punch to the gut. Painful, sure, but embarrassing, more than anything. He'd gotten him back as well as he could under the circumstances, but Joel didn't seem to be hurting like Jed was at the moment. After about thirty seconds of labored panting, he had started to feel well enough for another insult. 

"You're lucky you're furloughed in the middle of nowhere. Because your bedside manner is awful," Jed mumbled.

"And you're wheezing. You should really give up smoking," was Joel's restrained retort. "That patch got FDA approval last fall. From what I've seen so far, it's extremely effective and with very mild side effects. I'll give you a script for it, if you want."

"Thanks, but I quit last year," Jed huffed with one of his first normal breaths since this all started. 

"Bullshit. You smell like an ashtray."

"So I had a couple this morning. So what?" He pushed himself up to a seated position, and Joel just kept hovering around him, like a nervous grandmother watching a toddler take its first steps. "Will you back _off_? I'm fine." Unfortunately, he punctuated this with an unexpected coughing fit.

Joel sat back on his heels, knees still bent under him, and watched. He rubbed the bridge of his nose gingerly.

"I break it?" That sounded more hopeful than apologetic. Not that Jed was sorry.

"Nah, your diaphragm muscles are pretty resili-"

"Your _nose_ ," Jed clarified. "Your face is all messed up."

Joel smiled a little, despite everything. "No. It's just bruised."

"You sure? Looks a little off-center, from where I'm sittin', at least."

Joel's smile grew. "Yeah, well, you can thank O'Connell for that. _You_ didn't break my nose, but _she_ has."

" _Maggie_ did?"

"Uh-huh. Twice." Joel seemed perversely pleased with this. "Hell of a right hook on that woman. Not to mention temper."

"What the hell'd you do?"

"Got myself mixed up with a walking psychosis," Joel said, moving to sit cross-legged instead of back on his heels. "You feeling any better?"

He seemed concerned and genuinely interested in Jed's answer, for some reason. It was obnoxious. Jed sought to knock him off the high road he seemed to feel so superior for taking.

"I'm fine," Jed said, almost meaning it this time. "You know, you're being awfully nice, considering I bagged your girlfriend last night." A lie, sure - well, an exaggeration, at least - but it had the intended effect. Joel's smile wavered for a second, but he persisted with his medical evaluation.

"Whatever. Let me hear you breathe, okay?"

"Why?"

"Because a diaphragmatic rupture would require emergency medevac. And that takes a lot of time to arrange in the middle of nowhere. And because of the unfortunate fact that there aren't any exemptions when it comes to the Hippocratic oath. Even as it relates to you."

Jed rolled his eyes and took three deep breaths under the watchful eye of his rival. "See, I'm fine."

"I'm so relieved," Joel said sarcastically, before going silent again. He kept eyeing Jed curiously, obviously considering the events of yesterday...and especially, now, those of last night. The guy was smart, no question. In the relatively short amount of time Jed had spent in his presence in the last time they'd met, he'd noticed three things about the doctor Maggie'd brought home with her from Alaska - he was extremely smart, he looked at Maggie in a way Jed didn't like, and Maggie looked back at him in a way Jed liked even less. 

Her brother Jeff had told him she was bringing a boyfriend home last year, for their crazy old bat of a grandmother's birthday party. Jed hadn't seen Maggie the last couple of visits home, but he cleared his schedule this time. Jeff said the family was growing tired of this ridiculous pilot rebellion playing out in Alaska, and Jed was all too eager to help remind Maggie of what life in Grosse Pointe could be.

She was still every bit as sexy as she was in high school. She'd had longer hair back then, but was just as gorgeous - unattainable, but very desirable. No one he knew had gotten closer with her than him. Not that he'd gotten all that close. God, had he tried, though. 

She was his ideal girl. Homecoming queen, head cheerleader, junior league deb, but also on the honor roll every semester. Classy, cultured, but with a wild streak a mile wide. Get her away from her mother's influence long enough, and she'd show you a whole different side. Drunken bonfire parties out in the boonies, skinny dipping late at night off of Jed's dad's yacht, getting high under the football bleachers after the games. She was hell on wheels, but then dressed to the nines for the Sunday afternoon teas at the club, looking to all the world like the night before had never happened and certainly that she hadn't been involved. Minus that glint in her eye, if you knew what to look for.

So when she turned up with a short, nervous-looking neutoric guy who talked too fast and acted far too full of himself to live up to his own hype, Jed figured it'd be easy work, splitting them up. And yet, here he was, more than a year later, still working at it. Jeff'd said it was a lost cause, which was reason enough for Jed to pack up his bird and try his hand with Maggie on her home turf in Alaska. _Joel_ 's home turf. He eyed Joel now, as Joel watched him. 

"She didn't sleep with you," Joel said, looking less confident than he sounded. "I know her, and she wouldn't have."

"You must not know her that well, then," Jed said, smirking. "'Cause we had a hell of night together last night." Truth be told, they'd just made out for awhile. She'd started it, surprising him. He'd all but given up on her when she declined his marriage proposal. Something changed that afternoon, though, because she asked him over for dinner and had come onto him like it was her job from the moment he got there. Jed had a pretty good feeling that whatever prompted her to kiss him had less to to with his own charms than with her fight with Joel, too.

Joel let out a frustrated breath and shifted his gaze to the horizon. "Well, I hate to tell you this, Don Juan, but whatever happened between you two had a lot more to do with me than you, I know that."

Damn, was his constant correctness ever irritating. Maybe that's what pissed Maggie off at him yesterday. Whatever happened between them, Maggie didn't say. Not that she could keep from talking about Joel most of the time, but she never said what was going on. Hell, she'd never even confirmed they were together or what the nature of their relationship was. She just got flustered and nervous when Jed alluded to her marrying Joel. Even so, she shot Jed quickly down when he turned the tables and asked her himself. All his proposal seemed to prompt was an epiphany that Joel was the one for her. 

He'd been surprised, then, to intrude on them, obviously upset with each other, in Joel's office. She'd left and Jed saw an opportunity to try one more time. They took Taylor hunting and spent the afternoon hiking the nearby foothills together. When she asked him to stay for dinner, he figured he had his opening. She surprised him by being the one to take it.

She'd kissed him. Out of nowhere, really. They were sitting on her couch after dinner, having scotch, and just as he was considering how he might leverage her fight with Joel into finally getting her into bed, all these years later, she was in his lap. Before he could even think straight, he was on his back with her on top of him, kissing him hard. No sooner had he gotten comfortable that this might finally happen and started to unbutton her shirt, she'd jumped off of him. 

"You have to go," she said, suddenly hugely discomfited and frantically rebuttoning her shirt. "Sorry."

"What?! C'mon, Mag, we were just getting started," he said, trying not to sound too desperate. He reached a hand up towards her, touching her sleeve, which only made her jump again.

"I'm serious, Jed. You gotta go. Okay? Look, you can leave the bird here if you need to and come get him tomorrow, but you gotta leave. Now." She stood up and headed for her bedroom. 

"Mag! What's going on?" He sat up and watched her take a few steps, turn, look at him, turn again, and then repeat the whole process again twice more as she walked down the hallway.

Her bedroom door closed behind her and her voice wafted through it, still sounding rattled. "It's been a lot of fun seeing you, catching up on old times, and everything. But ... look, just... I hope you have a great trip back. Love to your folks and all of that stuff. I gotta take a shower. Okay? See ya."

Jed sat there stunned long enough to hear the water come on and realize she was absolutely serious and that he'd blown it. Or, if he was being honest, he'd never even had a chance in the first place. Whatever Joel had with her superceded any fight or breakup, and Jed was going to forever be on the outside. He collected his things and Taylor and left, setting up camp beside a lake for the night.

Jeff had tried to warn him. "If you think you're getting her to move back here, you're wrong. And if you think you're getting _her_ , you're crazy. She's in love with him. She's just too stubborn to admit it. I know my sister. And I don't know _why_ , but what she wants isn't Grosse Pointe. It's Alaska, flying, and that guy."

Jed looked at Joel sitting next to him now, his jaw set, eyes still fixed on the peaks in the distance.

"S'pretty here," Jed offered.

"Yeah," Joel said, sullenly. "It sure ain't New York, though."

Jed's conscience started to kick in a little, and he offered up a concession. "She loves you. Mag does, I mean."

"I know that," Joel said, sounding stubborn. The arrogance of this guy - God, how did Maggie stomach it? "Hasn't helped our relationship much, though," he continued, sounding a lot less sure of himself this time. "From which you were apparently the beneficiary last night." 

"Look, Fleischman," Joel turned to glare at him. The area under his eyes was changing from red to a faint blueish purple. He was going to have two shiners from this, broken nose or not. Even so, Jed knew when he was beat. "We didn't have sex. In high school or last night. She kicked me out before I got any further with her than I did when we were kids."

Joel said nothing but nodded and his posture relaxed a little. 

"And she turned me down. My marriage proposal, I mean. I don't know why, but she seems to want you."

"Hold on. You not only tried to _buy_ me out of your way, but you gave me two black eyes, tried to get her into bed, convinced me she'd actually cheated, and, on top of all that, you actually asked _my_ girlfriend to marry you?! Man..." Joel was shaking his head with an exasperated smile on his face. "You are unbelievable..." 

"Didn't work, did it?"

Joel rose to his feet. "Only because O'Connell's not the marrying type. Otherwise, I'd say you're exactly the kind of guy she usually goes for." He surprised Jed by offering him a hand up, which Jed accepted, pulling himself to stand. "And she'd have gone as far as marrying you just to spite me." Their hands still joined, Joel shook Jed's. "No hard feelings?"

"None. You won anyway - you got the girl." Jed smiled and returned Joel's handshake. "Just promise me you won't tell her how you got those black eyes. I believe you about her right hook, and I don't want to experience it personally next time you two get back to Grosse Pointe."

Joel nodded and dropped Jed's hand. "It would only endear you further to her, if she knew you hit me. But fine. I feel like she'd want me to point out here that women aren't chattel, and that I can no more 'have' her than I possess the wind or time or the direction of my life. All of which I clearly exist at the whims of as well, just like with her."

It was quiet again as they exchanged a long look, considering each other. He should have listened to Jeff.

"If you follow me back into town," Joel ventured, breaking their silence, "I'll introduce you to Holling. He'll set you up with some food for the road. If you're heading straight back to Michigan, there's a good 600 miles of nothing between here and halfway down British Columbia. Or so I've heard."

"You want to make really sure I leave, huh?"

"You got it," Joel said acerbically but smiling. He turned to walk back towards his truck.

Holling, as promised, was very eager to set Jed and Taylor up with enough food to make it all the way back to Michigan and then some, it seemed like. He was very nice - the friendly, quintessential kindly small-town bartender. His charms were obviously genuine - he'd managed to snag himself a cute blonde thing with a great body. She couldn't be a day past twenty years old, despite the guy being at least 60, by the look of it. 

"You're a friend of Maggie's, then?" Holling asked, boxing up his food for the road. 

"Yeah, from back home. Old friends. Grew up together."

Holling nodded without looking up from the box. "Eugene was talking to Joel about you last night. Got the impression you seem to have taken a recent shine to her - as something more than old friends." His eyes finally met Jed's after a pause, looking suddenly steely. "Perhaps so much so you may have caused her some trouble with Joel."

"Hey," Jed said, raising both palms in mock surrender. God damn small towns - nothing was a secret from anyone. "I already got put back in my place over that. Don't worry. I didn't ever stand a chance with her."

"Fair 'nough. Then, I'll toss a piece of my coffee cake in for ya, no charge, since you're on your way out of town. Didn't mean to startle you. Took 'em long enough to get on the right track in the first place, we just don't take kindly to anyone trying to get 'em back off it."

"I promise - she made it pretty clear I had no chance with her when she told me she was marrying him."

Holling's head snapped back up. "She said _what_ now?"

Jed felt put on the spot - like he was in trouble but didn't know for what. "Just...she made it clear that she wanted to make things official with Joel, so my offer wasn't ever even considered. That's all."

The blonde appeared out of nowhere on his right. "Did she give you a day?" 

"What?" Jed felt suddenly surrounded, as a man in an apron sidled in to stand to his left. "No, not really. She just said she wanted _him_ when I asked her to marry _me_. Almost like she hadn't realized it before or something."

"Oh, so _you_ 're the guy he was in here getting hammered over last night?" The blonde put her hands to her hips and narrowed her eyes. "Mag's old squeeze from back home? Ted, right?"

" _Jed_ ," he corrected her. "And nothing's going on between me and Maggie. I just told you, she told me she wants Joel. I'm not doing a thing other than tryin' to get out of here." 

He watched the girl exchange a look with the bartender who nodded slightly.

"Jed, was it?" He paused, considering his words. "We'd love if you told us a little bit more about the conversation you had with her. Might be a second piece of coffee cake in it for ya'..."

"Or forty grand," the girl added, hoisting herself to sit on the stool beside him. The man in the apron leaned closer, too, all three looking expectant.

Later, as Jed closed the box of food in the passenger side of his truck, he took a last look around this bizarre little town that Maggie'd so willingly let claim her. He saw her emerge from a building with Joel, talking and smiling, oblivious not only to him but to everyone else in town. Joel put his arm across Maggie's shoulders and she leaned close to him for a moment. He said something against her hair, and she swatted his chest playfully which made him laugh. He let his arm fall between them, and they kept walking close together down Main Street in the hazy light of the overcast afternoon. Jed smiled a little, glad he hadn't screwed things up too badly for them. Jeff was right; he hadn't ever stood a chance.

The bet he just placed, on the other hand, well, he liked his odds much better on that...


	14. The Epiphany

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ruth Anne's POV in the fall after season 5

Joel entered Ruth Anne's store and she smiled, glad to see him. Sure, he and she hadn't always had the easiest relationship. She was very protective of Maggie, and that girl made it damn hard to tell where things stood with Joel sometimes. And consequently where she should stand _for_ her. Since they'd started dating, though, she'd noticed a change in Joel. A softness about him she hadn't thought him capable of. Some days, he seemed more in love with Maggie than she did with him, too, and Ruth Anne found herself starting to feel a little protective of _him_ sometimes. Not to mention her investment. And she'd been hoping he'd show up today, too...

"Good, you're here." Ruth Anne looked suspiciously out the window as far as she could see on Main Street. She's not with you, is she?"

"Flying," came Joel's one-word answer. He was frowning and looking around the store as he walked. 

"Where to?"

"Well, it's Monday, so Sitka. Anchorage tomorrow. She’s off Wednesday. Juneau on Thursday, and Cordova Friday. Why?"

 _Because I think it's sweet that you memorize her schedule like that, Joel_ , Ruth Anne thought as she retrieved an item from underneath her counter. "Because I've got the perfect birthday gift from you for her."

"Yeah?" Joel's eyes lit up. "Oh, thank God. I've been trying to figure out what to get her all week. And I'm running out of time. It's tomorrow."

"Well, come and take a look at these," Ruth Anne said, gesturing grandly to the middle of her checkout counter. Joel grew closer and eyed the counter excitedly.

"What?"

" _These_ ," Ruth Anne said, tapping the box. "Only pair I've got; I held them aside especially for you," she continued, realizing even before he said anything that he wasn't happy. It _was_ Joel, after all. "What?" She felt herself bristle at his lack of enthusiasm.

"They're...gloves."

"Yes, they are. So what'dya think? Just right, aren't they?"

"Ruth Anne, I..." He paused and she could almost see him reminding himself about manners. "The thing is, and I really appreciate you trying to help out, I do. But no. Not these. Not for her birthday."

"And what's wrong with them?" Ruth Anne's hands moved to her hips, and she looked as irritated as she sounded. "Insulated work gloves like that that fit close to her fingers? She can't ever find ones she likes, let alone any that fit her tiny little hands. I have never seen them in a size extra small, either. And we turn over a lot of gloves here, which I know you know. It's a very practical gift for a woman like her."

"Practical, yes," Joel said. "It's a gift that says 'here's some gloves'. Not... you know... what I... want to say."

"And what is it that you want to say to Maggie?"

Joel blushed. " _Nothing_. Just... well, something a little more than 'I hope your hands stay warm when you're disassembling your gearbox in February, honey'."

"And what's wrong with that, as a sentiment?" Ruth Anne smirked a little. "Other than that I can't imagine either of you calling the other one 'honey'."

Joel ignored her last comment. "The thing is, Ruth Anne, we've been going out for a while now. A _long_ while," Joel said, still eyeing at the gloves on the counter with consternation. "I think she's expecting something a little more romantic than -" The bells of the front door tinkled their gentle sound as it opened. 

"Hey, Fleischman," came Maggie's familiar voice. Like Joel, she said his name more softly these days, too. She patted his arm briefly as she came to the counter to stand beside him. Doing that instead of glaring, as well as the changed tone of her voice were just about the only clues one might have that they'd been dating as long as they had. They were each so very private. "How're you doin'?'"

"I'm okay. You're back early."

"Turnaround canceled last minute. Hi, Ruth Anne. I came to ask if you - oh my gosh, are those - where did these come from!?" She scooped up the gloves Joel had left laying on the countertop. Ruth Anne raised her eyebrows as if to say _See?_ Joel gave her a warning look and one quick shake of the head to say _no_. That boy didn't know what's what, of course, and she'd settle this for him since he was too stupid to himself.

"Shame on you, Maggie, you nosy thing, you just ruined Joel's surprise. He didn't even get to wrap them for you yet. We were just getting ready to pick out paper."

Maggie looked at Joel in surprise, just as he'd finished giving Ruth Anne a withering look. He was trying hard to reorient his face into a smile when she turned her attention to him. "These were a present? From _you_?"

"Well," he paused, watching her, brow furrowed, trying desperately to tell whether this was seen as a good thing or a bad thing. 

She hit his chest with the gloves playfully. "Fleischman..." And then tapped the toe of his boot with hers. "For my birthday? Oh...thank you."

Ruth Anne quirked her eyebrow at Joel and he gave her a measured, incredulous smile.

"That's not the _only_ thing I was gonna get you, those gloves, but..."

"Extra smalls?!" She'd looked again at the packaging and then up at him, all smiles. "I can't believe you remembered! Ruth Anne, you have no idea - I can't _ever_ find anything halfway decent that fits."

"Really, dear?" Ruth Anne said, feigning surprise.

"Oh...Flesichman...this is so..." She surprised all three of them by leaning forward and kissing him, right in the middle of Ruth Anne's store. _Really_ kissing him.

To call them secretive was like saying the winter weather got a little chilly in Alaska. She'd never seen them so much as hold hands. Ruth Anne should have felt voyeuristic, uncomfortable, but if they didn't, she didn't. Truth is, she'd been rooting for the two of them since she and Holling watched Joel fall out of Maggie's truck, all those years ago, that first time she'd placed her bet. She sort of enjoyed seeing it all finally come together.

Maggie pulled back and smiled at him, both arms still looped across his shoudlers. "Sorry you had to see that, Ruth Anne."

"It's all right, dear. I don't mind."

She kissed him quickly once more and turned to leave. "Look, I've gotta get going. I gotta take the mail out and then change the oil in my truck before it gets too much colder - that high viscosity stuff isn't going to last much longer with the cold snap coming. If I'm feeling extra energized, I was thinking of doing yours, too. So these are perfect. Oh, I still can't believe you remembered! Thanks, Fleischman! Dinner tonight at my place, right? Seven?"

"Yeah," Joel said, looking a little bewildered. "Sure."

"Don't be late. I'll get something special planned. Since we're celebrating. Okay?" Joel nodded slowly. Ruth Anne tried hard to convince herself Maggie was just talking about food. "'Kay. See ya, honey," she said, smiling and waving as she left.

"See? _Honey_ ," Joel said, before turning back to Ruth Anne.

"Joel, I do believe you're blushing a little."

"I'm just embarrassed for O'Connell," he lied. "I can't believe she's so excited about a pair of gloves. What the hell am I going to get her now? I said I had another gift. And how much do I owe you for the gloves I didn't know I'd bought her?"

"I'll put them on your tab. I'm sure you'll think of something else. Oh! And in all the excitement, I forgot. I have mail here for you. Magazine and a card." She retrieved them and handed them to him.

"This is a _medical journal_ , Ruth Anne, not a magazine," Joel said, holding up one of the proferred items. One glare shamed him into a muttered, "Sorry. Nevermind."

His expression changed completely when he looked at the cream-colored envelope on top of the periodical. 

"Lord, what's wrong, Joel? You look as if you've seen a ghost."

He laughed uncomfortably. "I kind of have. This is from Elaine." He tapped the return address. "Upper west side? Figures."

"Elaine your fianceé Elaine?"

"Yeah," Joel said, turning the bulky card over in his hands. " _Ex_ -fianceé," he added quietly. "Wonder what she wants..."

"You'll never know until you open it." Ruth Anne reached into the pen cup next to her register and held it up encouragingly. "And I have an opener here, if you like. Save you the trouble of taking it back to your office, burning a hole in your pocket the whole way."

"You're nosy just like O'Connell. You just want me to open it here so you can see what this is."

"You're right on the mark, Joel," Ruth Anne returned wryly. "And I just saved your behind with Maggie. So open 'er up. We'll find out together."

"Fine," he said, turning the card over and putting the opener into it to slit it open. "But then we're even about the gloves."

"Fair enough." Joel held the card open now but wasn't saying anything. 

"What? Your ghost more fiendish than you expected?"

"She's getting married," Joel said, quietly. He pulled two scraps of paper free from the card. "Again. Wedding announcement from the paper," he said, scanning it and handing one to Ruth Anne while he examined the other. Ruth Anne looked down at the newsprint rendering of the somewhat familiar face of Elaine, smiling in the arms of an attractive man in his late thirties with a slightly receding hairline. 

"Well..." Ruth Anne paused and chose her next words carefully, unsure of how Joel felt about all of this. "Don't they make a handsome couple." She looked at Joel to see whether that had been a neutral enough comment, but he was still looking at the other paper. "What's that one?"

"Ours," Joel said softly. "She thought I might want it for old time's sake. He passed Ruth Anne another scrap of paper, this one more yellowed and with a much younger Elaine, smiling, sitting next to a baby-faced Joel.

"Look at _you_ ," Ruth Anne couldn't help exclaiming. "You don't look a day past your teens. How old are you here?"

"Twenty-one," Joel said, blushing again slightly. Moments like that endeared him to Ruth Anne, who suspected most of his arrogant bluster was done to cover for being a sweet and sensitive man, deep inside. Rare though it was that he showed it.

"You were just babies, then. How'd you ever think you could afford to get married at that age? Or afford a ring?"

"I couldn't." Joel held up an object. "Family heirloom. My great-grandmother's."

"Is that the ring you gave Elaine?"

"Yeah. It was in the envelope with the announcements."

"She kept it all this time? You've been broken up for..."

"Three years. Yeah. I told her she could keep it..." He turned it slowly in his fingers, the stones glinting light as they moved. 

"Why?"

"I don't know..."

"May I?" Ruth Anne gestured at the ring in his hands.

"Oh. Sure. Here," Joel came out of his trance some and handed the ring to Ruth Anne. "It's one of the only things they brought with them to America. Valuable things, anyway. It's almost a hundred years old. One of a kind, too. My great-grandfather molded the silver and set the stones himself."

"It's beautiful," Ruth Anne said, turning it towards the sunlight and looking at it more closely. It was, too. A unique setting - a blue-green stone atop a four-sided flower with one diamond on each petal, all nestled against the large center one. 

"What is this stone? It's a wonderful color."

"A sapphire. It's a blue-green one. They're rare. It's from Poland, I think."

"Well, it's very pretty," Ruth Anne said, handing it back to him. 

"Elaine didn't like it," he said, looking at the ring in his hands. "She only wears gold, and this is silver. And she kind of just wanted a normal diamond solitaire. But, like you said, no money, so..."

"Well, then it's back with its rightful owner again. Someone who appreciates it." Ruth Anne watched him looking at it, turning it again in his hands. "Really, Joel, it's quite striking. I've never seen a thing like it." _Maggie's birthstone is a sapphire_ , Ruth Anne thought but kept herself from saying. 

"It's the same color as her eyes," Joel said to himself. 

Ruth Anne frowned. Maggie said he tended to brood over things - ten times as long as a normal person would, too. He needed to give himself permission to accept his engagement was long over. The girl was almost twice married now. "Elaine's? Your memory's failing you. I think I recall her with darker eyes."

"No, Maggie's," Joel said quietly, before pocketing the ring and turning to leave. "See ya, Ruth Anne. Put those gloves on my tab for me, will ya?"

"Sure, Joel. But wait, don't you want this clipping? And I thought you were looking for another birthday gift."

"You can throw that away," Joel said, pushing the door open. "And I think I found something. Thanks."


	15. The Payoff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ruth Anne's POV

Four months had gone by with no news on the Maggie front. True, Ruth Anne hadn't been giving it her full attention anymore, diverted not only by being routinely disappointed but also by her own...well, whatever you called it when two lonely old troglodytes came together to spend some time. 

Truth was, she'd never given Walt Kupfer much mind before. He was a nice enough man, but he spent a lot of time outside of town and alone - hunting and fishing and trapping and fending for himself. As she did, only in town. She was never one for tromping around aimlessly out in the brush, unless it was to do some birding.

Walt'd been here longer than her many years, but only in the last few were his visits into town frequent enough that anyone could claim to get to know him. Not that she did. At first, he put her off. _Quite_ a bit. He was bossy and stuck in his ways, and he thoughtlessly and often tactlessly spoke his mind even when he shouldn't have. They seemed to find more to disagree about than agree. It took observing Maggie and Joel to realize that might be a sign that she and Walt had too _much_ in common and not too _little_.

Like Joel, Walt was a New Yorker. A money man, a Wall Street trader, and, to hear him tell it, one of the most cutthroat of the variety. And, also like Joel, he gave all up for a life in Alaska. Only he did it happily. He'd made his money, did his time, and incurred more than his fair share of hypertension while doing it. That's _why_ he did it. It was a doctor's idea - to move away from the city - and he took the advice more than to heart, moving as far as he could, both geographically and sociologically. In his late 40s, he arrived, built himself a home, taught himself all he felt he needed to know, and used his wits, not his wealth, to survive. Ruth Anne suspected he had a lot of that wealth still stowed away somewhere, not that most would guess it.

Now, in his late 70s, he knew he was slowing down some. That's why he came to town so often, Ruth Anne knew. He was looking for that human connection - someone to look after him. Notice if he didn't come. She knew she did the same, cognizant as she was of her advancing age. What she hadn't quite realized is that Walt didn't just need looking after; he wanted badly for someone he could look after, too.

He'd begun courting her. Months before she noticed he was doing it, too. She held out another few months after that, before assenting to letting him into her heart. It had been a long while. Not just since Bill had passed and she'd figured she wouldn't ever fall in love again, but also since she'd decided she liked life that way. She was a little too much like Maggie that way, she supposed - conflating vulnerability with weakness. Luckily for both women, Walt and Joel both shared an unwavering, if quiet, devotion, as well as quite a bit patience. The patience was a little less quiet but no less steadfast.

Joel's ample patience, though, was wearing now on the _town's_ collective patience. Ruth Anne hadn't told anyone about Joel having received the jewelry that had appeared just before Maggie’s birthday. He'd given it to her, though. Only by wearing it on her right hand, Maggie had evaded everyone else's notice. She wore it every day, though, and lied through her teeth about what it was when Ruth Anne pointedly questioned her about it two months ago as she was checking out at the store.

"I've noticed that ring of yours lately. It's beautiful."

"Oh," Maggie glanced down at it, her cheeks flushing ever so slightly. Her smile was fond. "Yeah. Isn't it? It's an one of a kind. Handmade. Antique."

"You're not one to wear rings. And I don't believe I've seen you take it off since I first noticed it."

Maggie abruptly turned away from the counter. "Forgot to get some yeast." Evasive through and through, that girl. Her finger twisted nervously at the hair at the nape of her neck. "I'm making some bread this afternoon."

"Ah," Ruth Anne eyed Maggie, overacting and searched through boxes, pretending to not remember where the box would be on the shelves, obviously hoping Ruth Anne would lose interest in the subject. She damn well wouldn't. Instead, she pressed a little further. "Joel told me it was an engagement ring."

Maggie's head snapped up to look at Ruth Anne, a panicked look in her eyes. "What?"

Ruth Anne stifled a smile. Bingo. "In a former life, I mean. His great-grandmother's, he said. That's where you got it, right? From Joel?"

"Oh. Yeah." Maggie’s face became more placid as she obviously landed on a story that would work, even amongst these facts. She set the yeast down on the counter confrontationally. "Birthday present."

Ruth Anne made a disbelieving face as she rung up the remaining items. " _Was_ it? That's sweet." The thing about she and Maggie being so similar was that Ruth Anne knew exactly where to push to yield results.

" _Yes_ ," Maggie said tersely, setting her jaw and raising one eyebrow. Ruth Anne knew that settled that. They were engaged. Maggie’s eyebrow moved a bit higher. "How's Walt? You two have been dating a _long_ while now, haven't you? Getting pretty serious now, isn't it?" The problem with Maggie is that she knew how to push Ruth Anne right back. They looked at each other for several seconds in silence.

"Twenty-two thirty," Ruth Anne offered eventually, announcing the total due for her purchase and the end of the prickly conversation. 

Maggie gave her a relieved smile, noting her acceptance of the offered truce, and handed her a twenty and three ones. The register chimed as it opened, and Ruth Anne dug two quarters and two dimes out of the trays. She watched Maggie leave clutching her bags and trot happily across the street to Joel's office like she did most afternoons when she'd finished her mail delivery.

That exchange was the closest Ruth Anne had gotten to any information, and, judging from the rest of the town's gossip on the topic, the closest _anyone_ had gotten. Or might ever. The street outside was now dusted with January snow and there was still no resolution, no coda to their story. The bet itself endured, month after month, page after page, with no payout yielded. The new bets had slowed amongst the dearth of apparent change, but the kitty had soared to dizzying new heights and many, many digits. Far above the ten dollars Holling and she had originally laid that summer morning, all those years ago.

Ruth Anne shook off the memory and began dusting her cash register, trying to conjure up the energy to sweep the floor next. That was usually Ed's job, but she'd been giving him Tuesdays off lately to work at shadowing Leonard.

The door chimed the sudden arrival of a customer. "Ruth Anne! Watch out - this is a candy _emergency_!" Shelly's voice preceeded her through Ruth Anne's open door and shook Ruth Anne from her silent contemplation. "Oh, I'm so glad you aren't at lunch yet! I've been jonesin' for sugar all morning, and I gotta get me some SweetTarts, _stat_. You still have some, right?"

"Sure thing, hon, right here" Ruth Anne said, turning to reach for the candy shelf. "Had a day like that last week, only I tend to those Butterfinger bars. Here you go - can I put it on your tab?"

"No way," Shelly said, pulling a folded dollar bill from her pocket. "I'm paying cash. H jokes about my monthly candy bill as it is, so no credit needed for this sweet tooth."

"Then I promise it'll be off the books and off my conscience," Ruth Anne said, smiling, and making change for Shelly. 

"I'm gonna have a pepperoni pizza face for a week after I chow on these, but I don't care." Shelly tore open one end of the package and stuck two of the brightly colored circles into her mouth and made a happy noise. "Mmmm... Normally, I eat 'em in color order," she mumbled past the mouthful. "Purples first, 'cause they're a little grody. Then yellow, orange, green, blue, and then I save the reds for last. Everyone knows they're the best ones. I could make a million dollars probably, just selling rolls of the red kind, I bet."

"I'm sure you could," Ruth Anne said, smiling fondly. Shelly was a sweet girl. "Now, while I've got you here, how's that cute little baby of yours with those chubby little wrists and the big blue eyes? Oh! Which reminds me..."

Ruth Anne reached under the counter and pulled out an official-looking white envelope with a green checked border and the Alaska state seal in its corner. "Lookie here what finally came. Alaska Vital Records, it says. Must be Miranda's birth certificate."

"You're kidding! Jeez, they took so long with the first one, I'd finally give up on the fixed one ever showing up. I still can't believe they misspelled her name. I figured when we had to start all over again, we'd end up with her brother on the way by the time we got the new one."

"You two aren't trying again already, are you," Ruth Anne asked, surprised, as Shelly tore open the envelope. "I figured you'd still have your hands more than full with that sweet little thing you've got - she'll be crawling before you know it, and then your lives'll gets _really_ busy..."

"We're not trying but we're not _not_ trying either. I figure we weren't trying in the first place and then ended up with her, so when it happens it happ... Dang, this thing's locked up tighter than Fort Knox." Shelly made a half-frustrated, half-triumphant noise and freed the certificate from its envelope she'd wrestled and torn her way into. "Ooph! And they better not have spelled anything else wrong this time - I wrote it all extra neat."

"Careful with it, dear, you'll need that thing a lot more than you think you will. Did you only get for one copy? You might think about...what's wrong?"

"No, I asked for three this time... man, but, they _did_ mess it up again! Look - it says Borough of Juneau on top and this is Arrowhead. Those dorks. I bet they misspelled Holling's last name, too, 'cause it's French and no one can ever remember that it's that o before e..." Shelly made a face.

"What is it?"

"Well, they didn't just misspell it, but they've got _Dr. F._ listed on here as the father. Yikes."

"Oh good _Lord_ , talk about typos...gimme that thing," Ruth Anne tsked, taking the document and scanning it. "That's the government at work for you, always..." 

She trailed off, reading the document and then re-reading it again. She held it back out to Shelly. 

"Shelly, dear, take another look at this. You've got younger eyes than mine, and I want to make sure I'm not seeing things."

"'Kay," Shelly said, confused. 

"Start at the very top, right after 'State of Alaska' - read it out loud..."

"'Certification of Vital Records'," she recited in a cheerful voice, "...'Bureau of Vital Statistics'... 'Certificate of...'" Her face squinched up in confusion.

" _Marriage_ , I believe is the next word printed there," Ruth Anne said, smiling. "Groom's name, Joel Haim Fleischman."

"What the heck kind of a weird middle name is that - Haim?"

"I would hazard a guess, given its owner, that it's Hebrew." 

"Whew," Shelly said, handing the paper back to Ruth Anne. "Well, I'm just glad they didn't screw up Randi's birth certificate again. I still don't understand what's taking so gosh darn long with it, though. She'll be driving by the time...what?"

Ruth Anne was looking at her expectantly, eyebrows raised, anticipating a reaction that Shelly wasn't yet having.

"What'd I do?"

"Nothing. Other than you just looked at something claiming to be Joel Fleischman's marriage certificate and didn't seem even the slightest bit interested in who -"

Shelly pulled the document back out of the older woman's hands quickly. Her mouth fell open, revealing a partially-chewed grape Sweet Tart inside. "'Bride's maiden name _Mary Margaret O'Connell_ '. Omigosh! Ruth Anne! They're finally getting _married_?!"

"No. Unless I'm mistaken, this is a certification. Not a license. Meaning they _got_ married. Already."

The front door chimed as the two women stared at each other in surprise. "Ruth Anne," came an irritable-sounding voice. "Do you have any bacitracin? Marilyn said our order somehow never came through, so I need to send a kid down here with a burn on his hand. Unless you don't have any either. Third time this kid's touched a hot cookie sheet in two years. You'd think he'd - _what_?"

"Hello, Joel," Ruth Anne said, smiling broadly.

"Hi, Dr. F.," Shelly added, with a similarly elated expression.

Joel eyed both women suspiciously. "What is it with you two? Something's weird."

Ruth Anne and Shelly exchanged a smile.

"Okay, I saw that, something's definitely going on. I'm guessing it's about me, too. Look, I'm incredibly busy today, so just save all of us the trouble and tell me."

"Just a little sugar rush, Dr. F.," Shelly said, holding up the package of sweets. "Don't tell the big H you caught me strapping the feed bag on like this. He'll give me a lecture me about cavities again."

"Well, he'd be right. Do you have any idea what that amount of sugar will do to the enamel of your teeth?" He made a disgusted face, probably imagining Shelly's teeth melting away under the sheer force of the sugar. "When you finish that, promise me you'll at least rinse your mouth out real good with water afterwards, okay?"

The door chimed again as Shelly promised she would, still smiling at Ruth Anne while Joel looked suspiciously on.

"Hey, Fleischman!" Maggie. Both women looked from her to Joel and then back at her again. "How's things?"

"Things? Things are not good, O'Connell. I've got a kid in my office who can't seem to learn that hot things burn, I've got next to zero required medical supplies because I've got an office manager who thinks it's more important to browse my mail than follow up with our suppliers about -"

"Oh, lay off Marilyn, Fleischman. You couldn't run that office _one minute_ without her. And she has an impossible job, dealing with you all day..." They'd turned to square off, hands on hips, sniping happily back and forth. 

"Yes, well, if she keeps forgetting to get our orders in timely, I'm gonna run the office without her for lots of days..."

"You're so insufferable, Fleischman."

"And you're glib, judgmental, and a little dictatorial, O'Connell. So what's your point?"

"The point, Fleischman is that you are the most -"

"Did you two get hitched?" Shelly's question penetrated the usual happy haze that surrounded them as they bickered.

Joel and Maggie both froze, mid-argument and turned slowly in unison to look at Ruth Anne and Shelly.

"What?" Joel managed the question, but his tone was a dead giveaway. He wasn't confused; he knew they'd gotten caught.

Ruth Anne took the certificate from Shelly and held it up. " _Married_ , are we?"

"Oh," Maggie said, pausing, before bludgeoning forward with feigned confidence. " _That_. See, the thing is..."

"Don't lie," Shelly said, hands on her hips. 

"Well, then..." Maggie started haughtily before running out of steam and offering a meek, "Yes."

"Thank God that's done," Joel said, reaching into his left pants pocket. "I'm going to start wearing this during the day now. I feel like an adulterer walking around with my own wedding ring buried in my pocket."

"But... but you two don't even live together," Shelly said, looking back and forth between Maggie and Joel, still trying still to absorb the news.

"Live together? Me and _him_?" Maggie sounded incredulous. "Are you crazy? Talk about a recipe for disaster."

"It's 'he and I'. For the record. And we're working our way around to it, Shelly," Joel added, giving Maggie a look. "Only very, very slowly. You gonna put yours on now, too? Or are you still going to try to make this ridiculous ruse work?"

"What, and admit I voluntarily forever bound myself to _you_?" Maggie grinned at Joel's growing irritation before making a show of putting a ring on her left hand. He smiled and she moved the ring Ruth Anne had been suspicious of for these last few months to rest next to her wedding band.

"Well, congratulations seem to be in order, you two," Ruth Anne said. "Sneaky behavior, but it was long overdue. Trouble is no one but the two of you knows how long." She looked down at the document in her hands. "Only I suppose _I_ do now." She looked down to confirm a date was populated again and nodded. She made herself not note what it was. She'd better wait and find out when everyone else did.

Shelly looked up excitedly. "You mean...?? Oh, Ruth Anne, we gotta go check the book! And tell H! There's seventy _thousand_ dollars at stake."

Ruth Anne pulled her coat on and picked up her store keys from the counter. "Joel, that ointment's on the shelf right there. I'll put it on your tab. I don't know what else you two came in here looking for, but it'll have to wait until after we get this bet settled." She pushed the certificate back into its envelope and started towards the door Shelly had already exited. "It's been accumulating for five and a half years, and it's high time we close the book on it." 

"What bet?" Maggie asked, just as Joel said, "You're calling a winner _today_?" She corralled both of them closer together and shepherded them towards the door using a glove and the envelope in her extended hands. 

"What is she talking about, Fleischman, and why do you know about it and not me?"

"Oh _now_ you have a problem with people keeping secrets, do you?" Joel made a grab for the medicine as Ruth Anne pushed him steadily in the direction of the door.

"This wasn't a secret," Maggie retorted, putting her hands on her hips and trying to maintain eye contact with Joel and Ruth Anne shooed them both along. "We just didn't tell anyone."

"Speak for yourself. I was acting under duress. Avoiding castration, if I recall the wording of your threat correctly."

"You always are," Maggie shot back. "You think you'd be used to it by now."

"That's all just fine and dandy," Ruth Anne said impatiently, giving them one last gentle shove out her front door. "Now you two run along, finish your bickering somewhere else." She put the key into the lock and turned it. Perhaps she'd won. She'd stopped betting for awhile but started up again just after Joel's ring began making a regular appearance. All that led to was her now-regular process of cursing them and laying another when her weeks came and went. The lock finally clicked into place, and Ruth Anne turned to leave.

"What bet?" She heard Maggie repeat impatiently as she started diagonally across Main Street, following Shelly's pompomed bootprints through the slushy snow. "Fleischman, tell me..."


	16. The Denouement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joel's POV

"O'Connell!" Joel had a couple of inches on Maggie, but she had long, long legs for her height. Hers were actually the same length as his - she just took faster steps than he did. Particularly when she was pissed off. Like right now. He trotted ahead two lengths until he was beside her again. "Will ya slow down?"

"Did you have to tell everyone? We were _trying_ to keep it a secret." Three paces more and he was already falling behind. He'd started to tell her about the bet, but three words in, she got mad and stalked off.

"O'Connell, the state of _Alaska_ told everyone, mailing that certificate. I didn't say a word. I haven't worn my ring or held your hand or...or done a single thing in public that could possibly tip anyone off." He tugged at her elbow gently. "Honey... come on. I haven't even told my own _mother_ about this."

"Don't 'honey' me," she said tersely, brushing his hand away. He noticed her pace had slowed a little. Progress.

"Why is it so important no one know about this anyway?" He was keeping pace with her now without having to try to, which meant she was thawing a little, thank God. "I think I did a fairly admirable job of keeping an entire _marriage_ secret from everyone I know. I was prodigiously clandestine. Really. I was." He paused as she slowed further, considering what to say next. Self-depreciation usually helped his case. "And you know how hard it is for me to keep quiet about anything. But, still. I know you didn't want anyone to know about us, and so I'm sorry. Honest."

"Why didn't you use your office as the return address for that thing?" Ha! She was down to just questioning his poor handling of logistics. That meant she was almost out of reasons to be mad, if she was scrounging through the most nit-picky of criticisms for traction. Whew.

"Because Marilyn sees every piece of mail that goes through there. Before I do, usually. And I thought you'd see the return address and pull it before you delivered it to Ruth Anne's. Or even if it got there that someone would assume it was a death certificate or...I don't know. I didn't think Ruth Anne would just hand it to Shelly to open." He reached for her elbow again. She didn't brush his hand away this time. "O'Connell... I can't keep secrets. Especially if they require lying. Or coming close to it. You know that. But I tried. I really did."

She stopped finally, as they reached the sidewalk, and turned to face him. She was trying harder to look angry than she was angry.

"Then what's this bet you never told me about?"

Shit. Joel looked quickly down at the medicine in his hand and turned to flee back to his office. "I better head back and get that kid set up with -"

"Uh huh." She tugged him back by his elbow this time and tapped the underside of his chin with her finger so he'd look up, look her in the eye. He hated that move; it reminded him of his mother and him when he was small. And worked just as well. " _After_ you tell me about that bet."

"Well..."

" _I can't keep secrets, O'Connell_ ," she said, mimicking him, fixing her eyes hard on his. " _I'm far too honest_." 

"Okay, okay. The town's had a running bet on us getting married. For a really long time. I think even back to when I first moved here. I found out about it a year ago." He paused. He'd be excoriated for misreporting the dates later, if she found herself a more replete recounting of this. "Maybe a year and a half. Except it wasn't about marriage, back then, just us... getting together. I don't have any more first-hand knowledge of it - just hearsay - but I think the deal is that people pick a week, put down their money, and if we get married that week, there's a payout. Only...well, hell, O'Connell. It's been five _years_..."

"Five and a _half_." She was almost smiling. And correcting him over minor issues. If he played his cards right - which, with her, meant laying them right smack dab on the table where she could see them clearly - he was home free. 

"Right. And now there's a not-inconsequential amount of money at stake. Because of how long this has gone on. Not to mention we've brought about the end of what seems to have become a longstanding civic spectator sport - watching you and I have enough near misses that if we were your plane, you'd have lost your license eons ago. And -"

"I think I've got the general gist of it. And so Ruth Anne and Shelly ran over to the Brick because..."

"Because Holling is the bookie on this little bit of romantic racketeering. And they ran off with our marriage certificate, so I'm guessing they're gonna use it to announce a winner."

"Ah..." Maggie said, half-smiling now. "Do _you_ have any money on us?"

" _Me_? No. I can't imagine they'd have let me bet. Sort of an insider trading kind of a situation, don't you think?"

"They might have. I think most people in town have a pretty accurate idea of who's in charge in this relationship." He smiled at that.

"And, like I said, I don't actually, _officially_ know about this, so I may be missing some of the finer nuances at work. I've just heard people make stray remarks. I kind of pieced it together over time." He scuffed the toe of his boot against hers playfully. "Hey, are...are you mad at me still? I mean, not to sound defensive here, but -"

"When do you ever," she interjected sarcastically.

"- _but_ that everyone else around me was doing something that I only suspected was going on isn't exactly something I can control. Right? And I _did_ keep things unsuspicious enough that, until that envelope showed up, no one had any idea. In a town full of people looking for any hint a payoff was coming. And it's been how long now? I think I did okay."

"I think Ruth Anne knew. She's been watching me like a hawk ever since -"

"- ever since you started wearing an engagement ring on your hand everyday where everyone can see it? Imagine that."

"Not my _left_ hand."

"Yeah, well, you should take that into account then - even with you sandbagging my efforts like that, and everyone around me scouring every glance for any hint of matrimonial intentions, people _still_ didn't know. I should get at least partial credit for a job very admirably done." He paused, looking both ways down the sidewalk for onlookers out of sheer habit. A habit he was eager to leave behind now. He put his hands to her waist. "And another couple of extra credit points for how hard it was to keep from doing something in the middle of town like this every time I saw you..."

He kissed her, and, to his surprise, she kissed him right back, looping her arms loosely around his shoulders and letting him pull her closer. This was a new one for them. They'd had a lot of their own private drama play out here on Main Street for all to see. Arguments, serious conversations, companionable walks, frigid incidents of silent treatment. She'd found his ex-fiancee crying here and meddled in his private relationship, only to walk the same street together a few days later, both of them changed. He'd watched whatever Mike had been to her depart both their lives from here, an event that further changed both of them. Something pure and romantic and happy like this happened only late at night and under cover of darkness. 

If he'd been entirely honest, he knew if it hadn't been for that certificate, he'd have probably been the one to give it away. And soon. He was too happy about how things finally ended to keep it quiet much longer. She pulled back slowly from their kiss.

"So what, you think that just because we're married, you can just grab me and accost me like this anytime you want now?"

"If I can't, then I'm fuzzy on why we bothered to get married in the first place. That's all I've ever been after," he said, teasingly. "Really, I'm sorry the secret's out," he added in a quieter, more sincere tone. "But not that sorry."

"Was bound to happen sometime," she said, sounding happy again as she unwound her arms completely from his shoulders. "Okay. How long's the thing with this kid gonna take?"

"Kid? Oh, the burn thing? Two minutes. Tops. Promise. He's mostly fine."

"Okay. You go deal with him, and I'll head to the Brick. Meet me there as soon as you can, okay? I'll stall things. I think we at least have the right to see how this wraps up and who won, don't you? Since we're the subject of it?"

"Yeah. Probably a cut of the money, too. Did you hear Shelly? Seventy _thousand_ dollars, this thing is up to?!"

Maggie gave him a disbelieving shake of the head before she turned and started towards the Brick. Joel smiled at her and turned to head to his office with the medicine. He saw Marilyn leaving it, still shrugging into her coat, eyes on the Brick - presumably her destination. Even _she_ had money on this?!

Maggie's voice drifted from behind him. "You're a pretty good kisser, Fleischman, I still don't think our marriage is worth seventy grand..."


	17. The Winner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maggie's POV

And she thought _she_ was nosy. Even though Joel agreed often and wholeheartedly with that, she was now thinking some of her reputation was a little overstated, compared what the rest of the town was like. Apparently.

She climbed both steps to enter the Brick's outer door and pushed straight through the interior door without removing any of her winter wear first. She was hit with that blast of warm, familiar air - the sights, sounds, and smells of one of her favorite places in the world. Only this time, the room went silent the moment she cleared the threshold.

"Well, hello there, Maggie," came Holling's overly-cheerful drawl. He was standing beside Ruth Anne, all the diners' eyes on them, and was holding a notebook. Shelly stood on the other side of him, clutching the envelope from before. He looked much more unsettled by her than he was trying to sound. Another possible indication of an unflattering aspect of her reputation - this one, perhaps better deserved. Holling's eyes met Ruth Anne's cautiously. "You still want to -"

"Oh, pay her no mind at all," Ruth Anne said, waving her hand dismissively. "She and Joel already found us out back at the store. Their ridiculous secret is out, so let's just draw this thing to a close. I don't think I won, but I know everyone else's dying to find out who did."

"Fair 'nough, Ruth Anne. Then, Shel, hon - as they say, the envelope please. Tell us what the day was, if you would."

"Hold it," Maggie said, finally finding her voice and removing her hat and scarf. "Not until Fleischman gets here."

"Aw, Maggie, that's sweet," Shelly said, smiling. "You want us to wait so he doesn't miss it? You guys really _are_ ball and chained, huh?"

"There's nothing sweet about this. I could care less whether he's here or not for this; I just want an unbiased witness. And, as always, I'm stuck with him." She paused, unzipping her winter coat. "You know what, and while we're waiting for him to get here, how about an explanation, too? You know, like how long has this been going on? And who started it? And why?"

Holling and Ruth Anne exchanged a second loaded look. That gave her the answer to the second question, at least. She hung her coat on the rack by the door and turned to face down the room again.

"All right. How long, then?"

"Only as long as you and Joel seemed to have eyes for each other," Holling finally offered. 

"Which means since the day he set foot in the town," Ruth Anne added with a wry smile. "You know, dear, while we're waiting to announce its date, it might be nice to hear a little about this wedding of yours. Since you decided to have it without all of us. A little secretive, don't you think, given the occasion?"

She felt a blast of cold air behind her and had a pretty good idea what he'd arrived. "If you were the one marrying _him_ , would you want any witnesses?"

"Setting aside the very real Alaskan legal requirement that there be two witnesses to any matrimonial agreement - we picked two strangers as ours," came Joel's voice as he entered the door and started removing his cold weather gear. "I think what my loving and overly sentimental _wife_ is trying to say is that it was a private ceremony. Be design. We decided it'd be just the two of us. But if you're asking why she insisted we keep up the ruse after that, I don't know. Run of the mill O'Connell psychosis is always a good guess, when the explanation seems to otherwise defy logic."

She turned to give him a withering look as he finished hanging his coat, and slipped his arm around her waist, and kissed her lips quickly, looking happy. She might be able to get used to conspicuous, after all...

"Alright, enough with this schlock and nonsense," Maurice said in a raised voice as he joined Holling and Shelly by the bar. "Give us a day, Holling."

Holling looked at Shelly, who moved to pull the certificate from its envelope.

"I'll save you the trouble, Shelly. October 5," Joel said, giving Maggie's side a gentle squeeze. 

"Why then?" 

"Because we had we a fight on a Friday, made up on a Saturday, decided to get married on a Sunday, and flew to Juneau on a Monday. There's a three day waiting period to get married after you get your license, so we came home. Then we had a fight on Tuesday, made up Wednesday, and came back Thursday to make if official. If there was a two day waiting period, we probably wouldn't be married."

Annoyed chatter started to spread through the room.

"Of _course_ they hid it..."

"Who gets married on a Thursday..."

"Always fighting, those two..."

"So who won?"

"Me. I always do," Maggie said as Joel turned and narrowed his eyes at her.

"That fight? Oh you did _not_. We specifically agreed that we _both_ -"

"No, the _bet_ ," came Ruth Anne's voice. "Who had that week? Holling?"

"Well, let's see here... that'd be the week of October 1 through 7... which looks like...oh. Well. Bit of an anticlimactic ending here, I'm afraid, folks... We do have an official winner. Only they didn't leave their name."

"You let people wager anonymously?" Ron jumped in, sounding irritated. "Holling, now, that's not at all what we agreed on."

"Hold your temper there, I did no such thing. If you recall, once we opened the pool up, we accepted anything from anyone as long as someone left a phone number or an address and paid their portion. Which this person did. By mail, it seems, according to this. Placed their bet March 11, 1992. By mail. Paid in cash."

"So whose is the phone number?"

"Isn't one. It's an address. Number 47 Route 6, Cicely, Alaska 99729. Okay, folks. Fess up and make your claim. Who's that?"

"47? On Route 6? That's way, way, way out of town, isn't it? That's not even part of Cicely."

"No. It is. Same zip code," Marilyn added, quietly. 

"Zip code's hundreds of square miles," Maurice added. "That's pretty far out of town. That old crone Edna Hancock lives way the hell out that way and is only at, what, number 19?"

"24," came a cranky voice. "The old crone is sitting right here." She swigged a healthy sip of whisky from her tumbler, looking unperturbed by Maurice's rude comment. "You wouldn't get to the 40s until out past those west hills. Another 15 minutes past my western border, at least. Big open piece of land, out that way. Eighty or a hundred acres or so. Changed hands couple of years ago, and the new owner just left it to nature. Or parts of it, at least, best as I can tell. Put a fence up in places, but that's it, after they bought it."

" _Inherited_ it, actually," Maggie corrected her. She waited for everyone to put it together. Joel, predictably, was the one who did it first.

"That's _the_ land? _Our_ land? I mean, your land. I haven't thought about that since I gave you that deed back in... I guess it's ours again now that we're... wait. _You_ had the winning bet?" He started to get that flustered, incredulous, combative look he got sometimes, and she smiled, pretty sure she knew what was coming next. "Oh, _tell_ me that's not why you married me, O'Connell - to win a bet?"

"No. In all honesty, I'd kind of forgotten I even made this bet. Until today. It was really for that week, Holling?"

"It really was," he said. "Says it right here, letters bold as brass. You didn't know what you picked?"

"And you just happened to pick the week we just happened to decide we'd get married?"

"Hold on, hold on, she can't win," Maurice protested. "She's got her finger weighing far too heavy on the scale, since she's half the marital unit."

"You far overestimate my role in this relationship," Joel said, still smiling at Maggie. "You're seriously going to stand here and try to convince me - all of us - that this was all mere coincidence?"

"It's the truth! Really. I didn't even make that bet to win it - I did it to jinx myself. You know, make sure I _didn't_ end up with you by betting I would. I had a bad feeling things might be tending that way. Especially when I overheard a whole table of people debating not just whether we had or when we would but _betting_ on when it would happen." She gave Holling and Ruth Anne a pointed look. "Apparently. I figured if I bet it was going happen, then it would mean it wouldn't ever. So I did. And I picked a day after you were supposed to go back to New York to be sure. Believe me or don't, Fleischman. But that's what happened."

The room went quiet as everyone seemed considered the truthfulness of her claim. "On rencontre sa destineé souvent par des chemins qu'on prend pour l'éviter," Holling offered up quietly. "Wouldn't you say that's the whole of it, Maggie?"

"C'est exactement ça," Maggie said and smiled. "Really, Holling, I promise this is the truth. I don't even want the money. We can give everyone back their bets or use it to have a big party every year on our anniversary or whatever everyone wants. All I want is credit for being right."

"Always," Joel muttered, and she elbowed him gently in the ribs.

"Well, I believe you won fair and square, then," Holling said, tucking the envelope Shelly had been holding into the notebook and walking across the room to hand it to Maggie. "So that closes that. Bien joué, Maggie. And congratulations, you two. Since you didn't have a wedding or guest book, I thought you might get a chuckle at some of the bets in here as a souvenir."

The bar resumed its normal din of noise and activity and Joel and Maggie made their way to a table together.

"What the hell does that mean," Joel asked, sliding into his side of the booth. "What Holling said to you just now in French."

"It means it's too bad you took Latin in high school instead of French, Fleischman," she said, smiling. 

"Did you really bet against us?"

" _On_ us."

"Which you said was you trying to bet against us."

"Tell me the truth - did you ever?"

"Ever what?"

"Bet on us?"

He grinned in a telling way. "I already told you I didn't. I'm not sure why you don't believe me."

"Because you aren't telling the truth. Come on, when did you pick? Before or after mine?"

"I didn't. Really. Ask Holling. Look in the book. I never made a bet in the pool."

"You did _so_! Your eyes are guilty as hell."

"I really didn't. Honest." He tapped her hand playfully with his fingers. "And if I had, I'd have been betting to make it happen. So I'd have picked a much earlier date."

"Yeah, okay, fine, but why -"

"I get no credit for being clever and romantic just now? None at all?"

"That would normally be very sweet, Fleischman, only right now it's less so because of that look in your eyes. You're hiding something."

He didn't say anything but looked guilty and amused with himself still. 

"Come on. I told you."

"Tell you what. Tell me what Holling said, and I'll tell you."

"It's Jean de la Fontaine."

"Who?"

"French author. It's from a poem. It roughly translates to that we meet our very destiny on the roads we take to avoid it." His fingers curled against hers and he smiled. "Okay, your turn. What are you hiding about this bet?"

"Well. I promise I didn't bet in Holling's pool, but...can I have your brother's phone number? I might still have a little something to show for us, bet-wise..."


End file.
